In what ways does your media product use, develop or

challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Whitney Maher

The name of my magazine- I named my magazine ‘sound’ as it gives the opportunity for the magazine to not only give information about its chosen genre but possibly on other genres of music as well because all music is just sound. For my masthead I used an interesting font and created a glowing effect on page plus, although this is not very similar to other more bold magazine mastheads I feel this could give my magazine masthead an advantage of individuality.

The images I used for my magazine were taken in an area that I believe would match the genre of music I am aiming for, I also had the model of the magazine dress in the typical type of clothing portrayed for this type of genre I done this because it helps build an image for my magazine. I then edited my photos to make them more clear and suitable for magazine front covers and features, I done this by making the background darker and grey and improving the brightness and colour of my model so that she stood out more clearly to grab the target audiences attention. My images all have a direct mode of address using gestures and facial expressions that I believe would be found in a typical rap magazine. Unlike most rap magazine where a male artist is displayed on the cover I chose to use a female model as this also expresses individuality by challenging the typical conventions of this genre of music.

The layouts I’ve used for all three of my magazine pages are typical layouts similar to that of your average magazine this is so my magazine portrays professionalism, although I did not follow the ideals of my flat plans. For the front cover I placed my masthead in the top left hand corner of the page and had pull quotes and incentive running down the side of my magazine and a banner across the bottom of the page describing details of the inside feature magazine brands that use this typical type of layout are Kerrang and Empire. For my contents page I looked at kerrang layout and font as I felt that compared to others this would create a bolder and easily understandable contents page. I included several artists’ names and used my own pictures to make up some other artists making sure not to take away attention from the main feature this simply added extra detail and made the page more interesting. For my double page spread I put my interview/main feature as a question and answer interview using standard English without slang and using quotes from the artist rather than displaying it as if its from the interviews perspective, I feel that this will make the reader/target audience feel more connected and on a personal level with ‘abysmal’, I also quoted abysmal on the top of the double page spread as a pull quote to grab the readers attention and make them want to know more with a clear image of abysmal and a clearly stated name similar to the design of the magazine masthead I felt that this page was most effective out of all 3.