Q1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
The Magazine that I have produced uses the key conventions that a music magazine available to buy in shop would use. Some of these conventions are the use of a general colour scheme (orange and white mainly). This creates a more realistic look to the whole magazine, although the colours do challenge the typical forms as orange is not commonly used on music magazine.
Slide 1 of the presentation below shows the key conventions or my magazines compared to others available. Magazines of any topic always have a barcode, the issue date on the cover of the magazine therefore I have used these conventions. Magazines also feature cover lines, which I have definitely placed on the left-hand side of my front cover. My cover of the magazine has the masthead ‘STRUM’ across the top of the page. The cover also features a medium close up shot of artist Sienna Low the common shot used for magazine.
Slide 1 of the presentation below shows the key conventions or my magazines compared to others available. Magazines of any topic always have a barcode, the issue date on the cover of the magazine therefore I have used these conventions. Magazines also feature cover lines, which I have definitely placed on the left-hand side of my front cover. My cover of the magazine has the masthead ‘STRUM’ across the top of the page. The cover also features a medium close up shot of artist Sienna Low the common shot used for magazine.
Slide 2 of the presentation shows the word 'contents' is always at the top of its contents page as it helps the reader to identify what page they are on. This is a convention that my contents page definitely follows. On a contents page there is also the text which tells you what articles are featured in the magazine. This is usually in bold, in capital letters and has a page number next to it to tell the reader what page that is.On a contents page, images of different artists to the artist on the front cover are sometimes used. I have followed this convention on my contents page. The main large photographs i have chosen to use are not the conventional posed pictures that the two other magazine contents pages have used. Instead, they are concert photographs with look more independent styled and that fits well with the genre of my magazine. Also, the 'unsigned' look of the female artist in the top left-hand corner looks suitable for an indie magazine. All the artists fit well with the folk rock look. The writing on a contents page of a magazine is normally in columns. This is something that i have used as it is used in nearly every single magazine, no matter what the content is.
Finally on slide 3 of the presentation, in a music magazine, usually the double page spread has a main image placed on the left hand side page. This is one convention that I have not followed because the photo that I have selected looks a lot better on the right hand page as the photograph of the artist has her hand slightly cut off and therefore it looks better if it is cut of the page and not cut in the middle. A lot of double page spreads in music magazines even have the name of the magazine and page number at the bottom of the pages although I decided not use these conventions because I think they were unnecessary and could over crowd the page. I also chose to use black coloured text as it is a standard colour that is easy to read and would contrast against the white and red parts of the double page spread.
