Question 1

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

My magazine uses the conventions of existing media products. I chose to do this as during the research and planning stage we looked at many different examples of successful magazines that were produced by students in previous years. I looked at the successful ones which seem to follow conventions and gain top marks. Not only this, but we looked at current real media magazines that people buy that also fit my genre. An example of this was Kerrang

Page LayoutThe Contents Page of my magazine is based on and follows the forms and conventions of Kerrang as this is widely read and is already established as successful in the market. The conventions I followed from kerrang were, the banner across the middle, the picture at the top and text at the bottom, the word contents written across the top and the competition in the bottom right. Therefore I knew that Kerrang is a good magazine to base my ideas on. I also did this as I thought that the style of the magazine fit my genre and would look good in the rest of my magazine. Below is the example of the Kerrang contents page and my contents page.

Also I chose to have a banner going through the middle of my contents page breaking up the magazine and separating the picture in the top half of the magazine from the contents on the bottom half. Not only does this follow the conventions of similar magazines in my genre such as Kerrang, it makes it easier to read and looks more professional and neater. Kerrang also seem to put an advert in the bottom left of the contents, usually it is about a subscription to their magazine, but as this is the first issue of my magazine and people haven’t read it before, I would have to get a foothold in the market and get a following. Therefore I have decided to replace this with a competition.

Colour SchemesAs well as this I have decided to follow the colours of Kerrang in that they use black, white and one other colour which stands out. Kerrang in the example above have used yellow, where as I have chosen red. I did this because the yellows I chose showed up green. As well as this I wanted to keep a constant colour palette throughout my magazine and the yellow didn’t show up on my front cover whereas red did. Another thing that develops forms and conventions is having two different coloured texts on the banner. I decided to do this as I thought that it looked good and stood out. Kerrang also seem to put an advert in the bottom left of the contents, usually it is about a subscription to their magazine, but as this is the first issue of my magazine and people haven’t read it before, I would have to get a foothold in the market and get a following. Therefore I have decided to replace this with a competition.

GraphologyHowever the font throughout my magazine doesn’t conform to common fonts used in magazines. It challenges conventions of real media in that this font specifically has not been used before, but the style is widely used. I chose to use the text ‘Defused’ I haven’t seen a magazine using this font so far but I felt that it fit my genre well. The text I chose looks slightly distorted whereas the font used by other magazines such as Kerrang and Metal Hammer look neat, but also fit the genre well. My font is similar with the distorted effect but there are few with this effect, most of them use more formal and easily legible font.

MY TEXT BELOW, EXAMPLES OF OTHERS ABOVE

ImagesThe images in my magazine follow the conventions of magazines in my genres. The people in real magazines in the genre I picked all have either long dark hair, black makeup or have lots of tattoos. I chose to go down the route of tattoos as it is easier to find someone who already has tattoos than it was for people to dye their hair. The guy I chose works in a tattoo shop which is why he is a great model to use. He has two full sleeves and tattoos on his neck and chest. All the tattoos are on show in the picture. Something that worked well was that in my mood board at the start of Oli Sykes we can see he has a tattoo of a rose on his neck. The model I chose to use from the tattoo shop also has a rose on his neck.

Double Page SpreadThe double page spread in my magazine develops different forms of real media. I have taken Ideas form different real magazines to help me with my magazine. The Style I chose to adopt from real magazines for my article was that I would do an interview. Also I chose to put the questions in a different colour to the rest of the article and to have a huge first letter of the article, like in the example below.

Camerawork and FramingThe common convention is that on the front cover of the magazine the image of the model is a mid-shot. My magazine challenges the convention as the photo on my cover is a medium long-shot. However the image on my magazine isn’t the only controversial image used on a magazine cover. Other magazines used uncommon, distasteful or nudes as their images such as Lady Gaga wearing her meat dress on the cover of Vogue.

BrandingAlso my magazine follows convention in that it has branding near the page numbers. This is done in most magazines!

Overall my magazine relies strongly on maintaining some conventions but challenging others in order to get the best final product.