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

My media product is very conventional in the way it is structured and presented to my audience some pages far more than others. It is very similar in the way it was created to the music magazine the NME. I decided to follow this structure because the NME’s audience is very similar to my own and they are one of the highest selling magazines in the music industry currently in print.

The first page of my magazine is the front cover, on this page I have been very conventional in the way it was constructed and this can be seen in many of the different aspects of my front page. As mentioned earlier the NME has been one of the magazines that I have followed in the way it is constructed for example my masthead is very similar as it is an acronym has a very similar colour scheme and is positioned in almost exactly the same place. I have chosen to follow the NME’s structure because they have a similar audience to my own and their circulation figures are very high for a music magazine of the same genre as my own. My audience research showed me that my audience do not read many magazines currently and so as the NME still has a good readership I believe that by following in their footsteps I will gain a large readership of my own.

I have also used banners on the top and bottom of my magazines as they are conventional of magazine front covers and they are also a good way of subtly indicating that your magazine is packed with content especially if you develop this convention with the usage of a plus sign which further indicates a magazine that is packed with additional content. The plus sign is a developing convention that is used in a few magazines but is becoming a conventional feature of magazine front covers as it useful in indicating the content of your magazine and in attracting your audience.

Another convention of front covers that I have followed is the usage of a main figure in the centre of my magazine. This figure is the artist from the feature article of my magazine and they are presented in a way that should attract my audience. However, the inclusion of this figure within my magazine is not entirely conventional because I have left the original photograph in its original state besides removing the background, by doing this I am going against the idea of hyper-reality which creates an unrealistic representation of what a person should look like and most magazines will follow this through airbrushing and other techniques so I am breaking the conventions here by not using any software to edit my artists and create an unrealistic representation as all the photos used in my magazine are completely unedited except background removal.

My front cover follows many conventional ideas of front covers and of music magazines in the way I have structured it. I followed this pattern because I believe that by following some of the standards set by the NME I can have success with my own magazine as they have had a very successful run and the way their magazine is structured is quite conventional. In the comparison below you can see the similarities between my magazine and theirs.

As you can see the two magazines are both similar in following conventions for example the usage of features inside the magazine being mentioned on the front cover is a convention of front covers and both of the magazines above follow that pattern. Both magazines also use a banner at the top and RIE uses a banner at the bottom of the cover, both of these features are conventional of front covers and they feature in most magazine covers. Both magazines also follow the same 3 colour scheme of red, black and white (although the NME also frequently uses yellow) and 3 colour schemes are also conventional of music magazines and they also help to codify the front cover to the audience.

Other features that I have used on my front cover that show that I have followed many conventions of magazine front covers are the usage of a barcode, a price, a date, an issue number, an earpiece and the headings and subheadings. All of these features are minor things that are on the front covers but they help to create the conventional magazine front cover that I have created here.

Overall I think that the front cover of my media product uses the conventions of real media products in many different ways and in some cases develop them slightly to create something better and I believe that by uses and developing current conventions of front covers I can attract current audiences that are interested in my genre to my own magazine to create success on the level of the NME.

The second pages that I created were the contents pages and for these pages I have followed many conventional ideas from music magazines but I have also broken some conventions with what I have tried to achieve in my magazine pages.

The way I have laid out everything on the right page is done in quite a conventional way with all of the contents of the magazine placed under different sections based on their contents and they are ordered chronologically by page number as this helps the reader to easily find features of the magazine and navigate it with ease.

I have also kept the brand identity extremely clear on these page with the use of my three colour scheme of red, white and black which is also conventional of music magazines as they all stick to their brand identities.

 I have also used lots of different images of different artists to portray the idea that my magazine is packed with content and also because contents pages conventionally use lots of images to represent the contents of the magazine.

 In the top right corner of the magazine I have also written a short editors letter. The editors letter is a conventional feature of contents pages but they are usually much longer and used to have a page to itself but due to the fact that my audience are aged 16-24 I decided to keep the editors letter short so as to keep with the correct mode of address as people of this age like to get lots of information very quickly. The editorial also provides a picture of the editor as this gives the reader a personal connection to the magazine as it can make you feel like you know the person and this is also conventional. So I have used a conventional idea in including an editorial but by changing how it is usually used I am developing this convention.

So, I have followed many conventional ideas when coding my contents pages for my media product however, I have also tried to make my contents page different and unique by adding a second page to my designs. Originally my contents page for my media product only consisted of the page on the right but after consideration I decided to take a different approach by doing something similar to the double page spread design of having the second page be taken up mostly by an image. I decided to do this to create a large amount of focus on the feature artist Aftermath as they are the idealistic figure that my audience would aspire to due to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. I also wrote their name in huge letters along the side to make them seem far more important than anything else. I believe that this is a very unconventional design and by doing this I have coded my contents page in a completely different way as I have created a huge impact on where the focus will be n these two pages whereas conventionally contents pages will have a few images of similar size and the contents will all be the same size.

I have also done another unconventional thing on my contents page as I have used small straight black liens to separate each different feature listed in the contents. I have done this to make all of the features clearly separate to my readers as my audience are of the age where everything must be extremely clear to them and so I am catering to this in an unconventional manner.

The final pages that I created for my media product consisted of the double page spread. On these pages I have followed a completely conventional path in creating these pages as I have used a similar design to many existing media products.

 I have presented the article itself in columns of small easy to read text that are aligned to the left to provide easy reading and navigation for my audience. I have used one large image to make up most of one of the pages which is a technique that nearly all of the existing music magazines use on their double page spreads and in doing this I have kept in mind the rule of thirds which makes the image more interesting to look at.

My media product also conforms to the conventions of double page spreads in the way that I have used quotes around the article and as the title to give a glimpse to my audience of what the article is about.

Other conventions that I have followed of double page spreads within my own pages include my usage of other images, page numbers, the consistent brand identity, a lead paragraph, drop capital, and a personalized tombstone with my magazine title. These small touches help to create a more conventional double page spread as they present the pages in a more conventional way.

I have included an unconventional section in my double page spread however as I have used an information box in the bottom left corner of the pages and this is mostly included because my audience have short attention spans and so need a quick burst of information about this person to remain interested in them and by providing this I am breaking conventions and catering to the needs of my audience.

So in conclusion over the pages of my media product I have provided a mixture between a conventional music magazine and an unconventional magazine due to the way that I have coded it to be structured in a way that benefits my audience rather than sticks to the generic normal conventions.