Evaluation Question 1: In what ways does my media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

I knew what codes and conventions went into creating a punk magazine as I had researched many existing magazines beforehand. This gave me a huge insight as to what I should include in my magazine and how effective the different conventions were going to be if I used them. Most of the conventions were to do with colour, titles and images so I kept to them as best as I could. I looked mainly at Kerrang, Rock Sound and Alternative press. These magazines however are more pop punk/alternative as opposed to punk therefore I had to change mine a bit more to meet that criteria with the models and content i.e. bands featured etc. however the alternative magazine were still good to base mine off.

Forms and conventions of a punk/pop punk magazine? • Dark clothing• Tattooed/pierced models• Bright colours• Bold main sell lines • High key lighting • Big mastheads• Crammed pages• Lots of images• Inconsistent colour scheme• Lists of bands• Free posters• Varied fonts• Studio shoots• Live gig images

ANGST Kerrang magazine

As I researched all the codes and conventions before making my magazine, I knew what to try and include in my own to make it more professional looking. I tried to design my magazine with as many codes and conventions of popular well selling punk magazines as I could to make it appeal to my target audience and to make sure mine would attract the right buyers.

I started this by deigning a front cover that is very similar to a punk magazine cover with conventions such as a bold masthead, main sell line and a studio photo and using contrasting colours for the background and titles for example my background was black and I used the colours red, purple and white to contrast against the black, making them stand out. As you can see I have placed my titles in the same places as Kerrang, making it look professional.

However I have challenged the conventions by not putting as much information on my front cover as some alternative magazines might. I thought it looked better being a bit more simplistic therefore I didn’t cram the page and I didn’t have as many sell lines as other magazines such as Kerrang which cram their pages full of information.

For the contents I adapted more codes and conventions by trying to cram a lot of information down the side of my image than I did on my front cover as this is what the popular magazine Kerrang’s layout is like therefore I tried to make mine similar. As you can see in Kerrang, they group their contents information into sections with headings such as ‘ features’ and ‘news’ therefore I included this convention into my contents page as I think it looks more organised and helps it to look less crammed. As well as this the audience can find what they’re looking for if there are headings to tell them where everything is as they can just scan down the page. I added an editors note at the very bottom accompanied by a photo of myself and my signature handwritten to try and make it look as professional and authentic as possible. Most alternative magazines have this and therefore it would make mine look more real. I added a red bar behind the contents title to make it stand out more. The red contrasted against the bright white studio background which helped it to stand out.

Finally for my double page spread I tried to steer away from the studio location a bit more and I used an outside location for my DPS image, making it look a bit different and edgier. As most alternative magazines use pull quotes, I added two in mine and wrapped one of them round my main image to make it look more professional. My main inspiration was Kerrang however I incorporated some of Rock Sound’s conventions into my own work such as the outdoor location and most of Kerrang’s images are shot in a studio. As you can see rock sound spreads their DPS image across both pages however with my image being fairly difficult to lay text over as it camouflaged into my background therefore I was restricted to only one page with ym image on and I had to create a block background on the left hand side page without it looking to boring or simple.