Q1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

My magazine emulates a music magazine that I researched; I used the codes and conventions of the magazine so that my finished product followed the music genre attracting the targeted audience. I carefully followed the real music magazines details for e.g.  The use of a large mast head, this is a main convention that is used in a variety of magazines my original masthead was big, bold and rather plain but it worked with the whole theme of the magazine.



I followed this convention and developed it by adding my own style to it. I developed it in order to make my magazine stand out in a significant way so that when people see my magazine they see that it has a rather acquired look about it whilst still being suitable to the targeted audience. I searched my fonts in Photoshop experimenting with colours and sizes I used two different fonts to give it a balance. The first font called old English text mt, was a graphite type, I used this to give it a youth vibe as graphite is commonly associated with young people of today which are my targeted audience I then used another simpler but bold font called show card gothic it gave the masthead a cool calm look instead of over complicating it with lots of different features. I then placed the masthead behind the main image which is a constant convention used in my exemplar magazine. I feel this made the magazine look more professional and alike the magazine I was emulating.

I used other conventions such as a barcode and a date line although the magazine I used did not have a date line I decided to add one to complete my look although I have followed the conventions of this magazine I have also added others that my exemplar may not have followed. I placed my date line below the masthead as I want it to be a key part of the head of my magazine as if I made another magazine it would follow that convention.

A key convention used is cover lines as they give a brief over view on what is being featured in the magazine. The short sharp cover lines are the main selling point so I had to make them interesting without giving out to much information making my audience anticipate the rest.. I used a very plain font style (myriad Pro) as I was trying to create a laid back comfortable feel to my front page; I stuck to a theme of three colours (red, grey, black and white) this allowed my front page to have bits of colour without over packing it giving it a more structured look. My cover lines are arranged in a vertical style flushed left and right, the majority of it is in the same size apart from my main featured article, I have written the name of my star in bold white writing and placed it in a black highlight so that my audience assumes straight away that my magazine has a feature on a new upcoming star by the name of Jordan.

On my front cover a followed a very traditional convention of putting a medium close up shot of the person featuring in my main article, I followed this convention as it is a good way of introducing the artist being covered in the magazine allowing the audience to get up close view of them almost physically and learn a bit more about them through the text. I had my model stand in a very comfortable non complicated position as I wanted the audiences’ first impression when they viewed the front page to be that my model is good looking and positioned in calm manner rather than him standing in a complicated position or dressed inappropriately or in a provocative manner.

My contents page also follows codes and conventions of an original magazine I included multiple images of various sizes. I used these images to link the titles on my contents page and to briefly illustrate the issues of discussion. In order to fully attract my audience I included pictures that linked to my front page and also linked to the youth scene e.g. swag, images of clothing and other famous music stars.

I used a consistency of square shaped images and boxes, the extra red boxes were fillers as well as adding colour to the contents page. My regular’s column covered all the consistent articles featured in my magazine monthly so that the reader can easily access specific pages. I flushed my writing left and right so that the writing did not dominate the pages but the images did.

I also made use of an editor’s note in order to show appreciation to my readers and further inform them that the information was 100% and I also wanted to encourage my readers to read on and never lack faith in the magazine.

In my double paged spread I followed conventions of an original magazine. Firstly I used a neutral tone on the background then I used deep colours red and black in order for the writing and the Image to pop. I used a drop capital to emphasize on the first word and I also changed the colours of each paragraph so that it is readable and attractive to my audience.

The main title slants in a strategic way in order to abstain from the normal, adding flavor and developing the conventions of a double page spread.