Q1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or

challenge forms and conventions of real media

products? (i.e. of music magazines)

To begin researching music magazine conventions I first looked at a variety of existing magazines of different genres. For example, in my research I looked at football magazine ‘Four Four Two’ and lads magazine ‘FHM’. I also looked at work from students from past years. Knowing that we would be producing our own music magazine I began to focus on the aspects of magazines such as Front covers, Contents Pages and Double Page Spread Articles. One key aspect of a magazine is the ‘Rule of 3’; the colours used in this are highly dependent on what genre the magazine is based on. Although it is not a very established brand, I took a lot of inspiration from RWD magazine purely because the sorts of artists featured are similar to what I wanted mine to be.

• The first use of a convention in my magazine is the use of a large mast head. On my magazine I have used the convention in how it is the largest text on my page and is centred at the top which allows it to stand out. However, on the cover I have analysed the artists picture covers part of the masthead whereas on mine it does not, this is because RWD is an established brand so its readers will be able to recognise it even though it is partially covered.

• The second convention I have used on my magazine is the use of the main image of the artist being a mid-shot. Mid-shots are used on front cover because it is the right sized image to emphasize that the artist is the most important feature of a front cover. To add to this I have also used a mid-shot where the artist is making eye contact with the reader, this is a basic convention that is used to engage the reader.

• Another convention I have used is the listing of other artists related to the genre on the edge. This is used because it allows the audience to get an insight to what other artists are featured inside the magazine which relate to the genre and will interest the reader into purchasing the magazine. I also focused on using a similar number of artists to mirror the convention.

• The graphology is a key element of a magazine and I think the layout of my front cover has in many ways followed conventions for this such as how the masthead is centred at the top; the barcode is kept small and to the side and how the date and price are wrote in a small font at the top.

• I think the use of genre is clear in many part of my magazine. Firstly, all of the artists featured in the features on the contents page are artist from the same genre so the reader can identify this. Secondly, the front cover incorporates a dark theme with the colours Black, Grey and White and with all of the text being black which can be linked to the dark colour elements of the genre such as dark clothes. Finally, the double page spread also keep the theme of black and grey and also we get a clearer picture of the artists displaying his expression of attitude.

• In many ways I believe that I used a lot of conventions, but one of the forms in which my product challenges this is the conventions of magazine is my use of the artists bold text. The convention is that normally just a bold text is used with different fonts for different genre but the way I have challenged this is that I have used a text that looks as if my artist ‘Harry Yates’ has wrote on the magazine himself. I did this because I felt the slightly graffiti looking writing fitted the genre but also fulfilled what I wanted in challenging this.