Question one.

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


Whilst creating my music magazines front cover, contents page and double page spread, I conducted research on other popular music magazines in order to get a sense of the conventions of them. The two main colours in used throughout the whole of my magazine was black and red, these two colours both symbolise power and danger, which a rock magazine always has an element of. Also, these colours are bold and stand out, which most rock/indie magazines do. I used bold font as it would be easiest to see and all of the magazines that I looked at had bold, simple font, however the mast head uses a different font as it is the title of the magazine and the audience would identify my magazine by the mast head font. The mast head is on a photograph of a guitar nec that I took, one of the main conventions that you would see in a rock/indie magazine would be a guitar, so I have used this and placed it on my front cover and all throughout my magazine. My main image is of my singer holding a guitar, so again I have a guitar on my front cover, I chose to take my photograph like this as ona  lot of the music magazine I looked at the main image was of a band/singer, usually posing, not performing, but still somehow showing that they are singers, so by my model holding a guitar and standing infront of a graffitied wall it suggests that she is a singer and suggests what sort of singer she is, her instrument and where she is standing suggests she is a rock singer, however her clothes and body language suggest more of a indie singer. I created my model like this as she was previously in a rock band, however she split up from them and went solo, changing her image and music style slightly to a more toned down style, e.g. indie. In my double-page spread I created an interview with 'Katie', this follows the conventions of a music magazine as 'Katie' is my model on the front cover and all the magazines that I looked at had a main story in the magazine about the main image on the front page, so I created the double page spread about her, however this challenged the conventions of a rock magazine as I have created the main story on a single female singer/guitarist, as all of the magazines I looked at focused their main article on single guy singers or a band full of guys. This will interest the audience into buying it as it is something different, so will stand out more and most likely introduce them to a new type of music. I used words such as 'haha', and 'phew' in my interview as in magazines like this one the interviews are usually chatty and informal, but whilst getting information at the same time, so I created my interview like them ones. Also, on the front of the magazine I used words such as 'plus' and 'win' as these are what are expected on magazines. The double page spread continues with my theme colours and so does the contents page. In contents pages that I have seen, they have images them and there is always something about a concert review, so I used this and got a photograph of one of the concerts that I have been to and used this image on my contents page. My magazine does have a lot of the conventions of magazines, however I have also made it my own by challenging the conventions as well.