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

COVERThe cover of my media product uses similar things to most magazines which are around. I went for a masthead similar to Q magazine as I felt that it has more impact than a standard title would. Also, I have one main image as the main focus and no other images in order to direct the audience’s attention to either the main feature or the masthead. To challenge most magazines I have only included a small amount of information on the cover, with little writing on the page. I thought by doing this then the focus would be solely on the main artist which I have used, however by showing the audience there are many other people involved they may want to read it anyway. I chose to include a skyline at the top of my cover page to add some colour to the page which I created in mainly greyscale colours. I added a slogan into it because if the audience could not gather what the magazine was about, the slogan would push them in the right direction. Another convention of a cover I used was a barcode and price. These are legal requirements so I had to put one on to make my product look real, and I decided to put it in the bottom corner where it is easy to see. A large cover line over the main image shows what the main feature is, with two smaller cover lines above and below the main cover line. I made the background and outline of the cover lines different to the rest of the page in order to make it stand out more. The final thing I chose to add to my page was a puff. I did this in order to try and grab the reader’s attention to come and read the magazine, promoting a free concert guide. Readers are more likely to buy magazines which include free things.

CONTENTSI did a lot of in depth research into conventions of contents pages in order to see which I would include in my magazine and which I wouldn’t. I chose to include most of these conventions, however there were also a few that I left out purposely. I started by adding the logo/masthead from the cover to the contents in order to show that these two pages belong to the same magazine. As well as this, I used the same font the whole way through my production. I included one main image related to the main feature, and two smaller images which were also symbolic of other features in the magazine. I kept to the same colour scheme again showing that these pages are from one magazine and so it doesn’t look disjointed. I added a small by-line on the side of the page as some readers only read magazines because of photographers or journalists etc., so it would clearly show anybody interested what they needed to know. Alleys and spacings were one of the most important things when I was producing my contents page. I didn’t want everything to be overlapping and I needed clear spacings between things to show they are separated. I used shapes such as bold red lines and simple black lines to separate things, however I also left gaps with where I put text and images to try and make it look professional. The images had large number indicators on top to show the audience what pages the features can be found on, in case they are reading the magazine because a certain person is in it etc. I included at the bottom a bold black line which separated all the images and information from further information of which I added to the bottom of the page, such as page number, date of issue and web address.

DPSI used nearly all of the features of a double page spread on my own. This included a CVI, caption, standfirst, by-line, page number and pull quote. I chose to include all these as many magazines use them and I think they are all good conventions of double page spreads. As well as these conventions, I have stuck to the colour scheme and used alleys and spacings to make it look more professional, as well as the use of bold lines. The one main cvi draws in all of the attention and is the first thing that catches the reader’s eye when they open the page. As well as this, a caption was necessary to explain to the readers what they are looking at, just in case they are confused or unsure. I included a standfirst as it is there to introduce the whole piece of writing, and with the pull quote together they give the reader a brief insight as to what the article is about and what it contains. Similarly to the contents page, I included space at the bottom separated by a black bold line, which I used for page number, date of issue and web address. I felt it would also be necessary to separate the writing from the page, therefore I added a small black outline around the text.