Q1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Before I embarked on my project I took a lot at some old music magazines as they used their form and conventions to interest their target audience. With this little research I done I started to create ideas of how my magazine would look like and how much it will take to make it look as professional as possible. I drafted eight different types of my products using different forms and conventions to see which suits my target audience best while doing this I had in mind to imitate an existing professional music magazine while creating my own unique style. The using of a big masthead across the front cover makes my magazine stands out as it is written with the biggest font size and bold same as a professional magazine. This will allow the magazine to catch the audience eye, gain recognition and also distinguish it from the rest of the magazines in stores. To interest my audience I decided to use a font called Wet 1 Becker which I download from a website called dafont (http://www.dafont.com/wet1-becker.font). This implies to my audience as this will give them a common understand of what to expect in my magazine. Another convention I used is that I had the colour red and blue fonts theme running through my whole magazine to look professional, keep my audience eye open with the bright colours, not get them confused and easier to read.





As a professional magazine producer you have to think and come up with a convention that sells your product and makes your audience want a piece of it which is the selling line. My selling line indicates that it’s the “UK’S BEST SELLING MAGAZINE” to point out the reputation the magazine their reading has and makes them wonder why it is the UK’s best selling magazine. Other magazine might use their selling line to alert the audience of what the magazine featured and must be something that will interest to target audience to sell the product.

My barcode and date line was placed together at the bottom left of my magazine, this is not very common for both of them to be in many other magazines but it is part of my convention. I combined the price of my magazine with a date line and barcode together to show the relationship between the three. This will benefit both the person buying the magazine and the cashier at the till as it will be visible to the buyer when it’s placed on the shop and the cashier will can clearly see the price while scanning the barcode without having to look around for it.

My main coverline is to stand out from the rest of my coverline to give my target audience a sense of importance and it has to be something that will interest them in reading more about the magazine. This convention will draw my target audience closer to the magazine as it will feature what the magazine is about. My main coverline was written in a bigger font to show dominance and catch my readers’ eye, I also used a second main coverline with a slightly smaller font to connote a sense of hierarchy in my coverline which is aimed to have my target audience reading. The two main coverlines was placed on the right as I want them to be visible to my audience when they enter the shops, the rest of my coverlines was placed on the left of my front cover with smaller fonts and painted in colour red and blue which highlights certain words in the coverline which supports my theme of importance and hierarchy of topics and texts in my coverlines.

The other convention I came up with is the using the of puffs in my cover page as this makes my magazine look professional and to give a sensation of a free or bonus gift relating to the genre of music my magazine is promoting which is R&B and HIP Hop. I photographed my main image in a low angle position capturing my models waist to the head which makes it a mid-shot. This convention is used to illustrate the power and dominance my magazine has in the industry.

                                           

I emulated my content page with the idea and style of a professional music magazine by giving as much information as possible. The convention I used is the continuity from my cover page meaning that there is a relationship between them. I demonstrated this with the use of colour red and blue, which makes the writings clear and bright to my target audience, because there are lots of information in my content page the use of bright colours will keep the readers eye open and not bored. Another convention is the using of different images apart from my main image, this is to give my audience a variety of visible choices so they can see who is featured in my magazine.

My magazine only consists of two categories although most professional content pages consist of more. Only 2 are used to give a sense of originality as well as a professional look to my content page magazine. The magazine I emulated only featured 1 image, in which I used 3 images to give my audience different visions of my models. The convention I used in my double page spread is simple as one side for the writing and the other side for my image. The writing is also in blue and red to show continuity in all my products.

 

The convention I used to catch my reader's eye is the big headline across the first page which tells what the story is about in an exciting phrase. I developed the idea of writing my double page spread in 4 columns to look neat and easier for my target audience to read, in order to engage my target audience in the reading, I had highlighted some words in either colour blue or red in the text. A whole page size was devoted to my image to attract my reader’s eye and limited information was written on it to just interact my target audience with the image.