1)In what ways does your media product use,

develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

My magazine uses the forms and conventions of real media products such as The Fader and Dazed and Confused. Both of these media products have a very simple layout with just the masthead, image and little text on the cover. This is because the image alone engages the audience into buying the magazine as eye contact is used in the facial shot. Although the artists name isn’t on the cover, my target audience should be able to relate to the artist without reading any information or details. I think this makes my magazine look neat and professional and straight to the point; the reader doesn’t need the extra information to be attracted to the magazine. From the draft to the final magazine I changed the name of the magazine from ‘PURE’ to ‘LABEL’, this is because I didn’t think the word ‘PURE’ sounded like a music magazine. Also because it has only 4 letters it wasn’t long enough to have a fixed width across the page. I therefore chose LABEL because it suited a strong font of Arial Bold and because the word label is ‘an item that is used to identify something or someone’; my magazine is constantly identifying and labelling new unique artists. Originally I had challenged the conventions of a ‘handcraft’ style by arranging the masthead ‘PURE’ as scattered letters. I also placed scrabble letters on the cover and the double page spread but as the text on the cover, contents and double page spread pages are well structured I didn’t think this would fit in with the theme so I decided not to have the artists name on the cover and to just use the image of her to grab the audiences interest instead. I also thought that my artist would want to be represented in a clean and elegant way and by choosing this certain layout instead of the handcraft, messy look it sets a good impression of the artist herself. I feel that I have challenged the conventions of other media products because most other music magazines such as NME and Q seem to be quite busy with the colours, images and text which stand out, where as I have gone for a very orderly layout. This is something you wouldn’t expect from a music magazine but I think that it works quite well and achieves its aim of engaging my target audience.

The neutral colours have also been appropriately used to go well with the cover image because if a brighter background was used it wouldn’t fit it with the indie-pop/folk genre. Artists that use this neutral colour theme is Birdy and Lykke Li. I stuck to the colour theme of black, white and a washed out blue so that it looked basic but eye-catching and also because other magazines such as Dazed and Confused used three simple neutral colours. Also on most contents pages that I had looked at not a lot of colour had been used and this is the main reason why I kept mine basic by using the two colours of black and white. Even though these colours sound conservative they make the page look smart and elegant and go with the structured theme. The double page spread colours match the cover colours which show that there is a running theme through my magazine.

I have placed the magazine’s website on the bottom of each page so that it used the forms of other magazines; it also makes the reader aware that there is a website that they can read through as well as the magazine. There is quite a lot of information on the contents page that not only tells the reader exactly what is on the other pages of the magazine, but it also gives them an insight to each page in detail, “Their album took 3 years to make, but what else did we expect from a band with such a clear vision of how they want to sound?” On the double page spread there are also details about the image and the names of the designers etc. I think these details on the bottom of the page makes the page look professional as it gives the reader an insight to how the artist has been dressed for the shoot.

With the costumes, style and iconography I ensured that my artists wore exactly what I researched into. I wanted her to look innocent but quirky to fit with the genre of indie-pop. This is why I put in her air max trainers and a floaty white dress, however on the images I had chose in the end the shoes are not to be seen but I still feel like her dress goes with the neutral magazine colours. Furthermore when taking my pictures I made sure my model used quite natural poses and not too forced unlike other magazines because I thought this would make my magazine look quite subtle and not to overpowering. It also goes with the colours and my colours are not too strong and overpowering either. Taking the pictures was the hardest part of using convections of other media products but was the most important part, as the pictures are the main attraction for my audience. I had to ensure that they looked professional, which meant the shots had to be accurate and thought deeply about. I achieved this by using other pictures as my inspiration as these had a similar representations as the way I wanted to represent my artist. I thought Lykke Li had been represented quite innocently in her pictures and this is why I have done the same for my artists, Lucy. I wanted the cover image alone to grab the audiences attention, and this is exactly what it has done in my opinion. I also think the images that I took would help the audience relate to them because of the simple way they have been represented.