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

With the use of convention’s and forms of established magazines, my magazine looks more professional and attractive if it were to be sold on shelves. For my front cover the presentation of my features on the left hand side was done due to the conventions of an average rolling stones magazine.  With all the features on one side of the magazine it makes it look much more organized and attractive. It also makes the photo become a much more dominant element of the magazine.  Using this convention I developed it to help make the cover line link with the picture much more evident and made the features stand out. I did this by enlarging the text size and width over the page, while keeping them all to the left of the page.

With other elements of the page I kept to the conventions. Another example of this was the masthead. With the masthead ive kept it on the top of the picture, emphasising that this is the name of the magazine and doing so makes it stand out over the photo. Compared to the conventions of The rolling stones magazine ive not changed or developed the convention of having it over the main photo. However like other  magazines e.g Rolling Stones or Mojo  ive chosen to ignore the conventions of those magazines with the masthead covering the whole width of the page and instead use the conventions of Q, with my masthead in the left corner giving it a much more neat look to the magazine.

The plugs on my cover grab the attention of customers from the shelf. With two on the cover it makes it even more likely that one of them is going to be of interest to a reader.  The conventions used on the NME cover with the plug going straight across the pages width means the plug is extremely hard to miss. I chose to develop this and have my page width plug at the bottom of the page. The reason for this was because i didnt want to take any attention away from the masthead and other plugat the top of the page. With my magazine advertising that its a brand new magazine having the masthead as visual as possible enables it to be remembered the easiest.

Evualating the use of conventions on my front cover i think having the features on the left hand side gives it a much better look to the cover than if they were to be spread over page on both sides and in the middle. It makes it much easier to read and with the target audience of my magazine being people always on the move a much more appealing magazine.

 

The other convention of magazines used on my magazine is the masthead. With this i think it suits the cover and the theme of the magazine. Having the masthead covering the whole page would have taken the attention away from not only the features but the picture which is the first thing you look at on a magazine. Whereas having the masthead in the corner makes the masthead a much more visual appealing look and much easier to recognise. The convention of having the photo over lapping the masthead (like the Mojo cover to the right) is the most poppular of all conventions for a music magazine. Doing this makes the picture stand out alot more than if it were to be blocked by the masthead lapping over it.  I chose not to do this becase it would take attention away from not only the features but other plugs. Having the photo over the top of the masthead makes the main cover line the most important  element of the magazine. In other issues i would have done it but because this was my first issue of the magazine i wanted to emphasise as much as possible what the name of the magazine is. I did this by having the masthead overlap the picture as if its even more important than the articles inside the magazine.

For my contents page one of the conventions followed was the use of white space around the pictures and article names and numbers.

This effect makes everything a lot more spaced out and gives the page a neater finish.

A good of this convention used is the contents page of a Rolling Stones magazine (shown to the right). The magazine separates the left of the page to the right with one simple line of white space. This separates the page and makes it obvious that all the main articles are in one column. It also creates room for a picture and small paragraph describing it. I chose not to change the use of the white space in any way. The reason for this was because I thought it split the page up, dividing it up into sections. With these different sections I was then able to put photos and other information on one side while emphasising all the article pages and information about them on the other. Compared to my first design (shown underneath) the use of white space on the page divides it up and makes the page just generally much easier to read.

Another convention used was the use of text inside the picture describing the photo or saying what page number the article will be on. Like the contents page of a Q magazine (shown on the right) the picture of the singer Adele as a small caption on it stating what page number it’s on and what it is briefly about. This small caption enables the reader to become straight away attracted to the article. With the artist being so big and the picture so obvious it attracts new readers to the article. With my contents page I used this convention and had my main article and a smaller feature on the right hand side of the picture using captions in the corner of them to inform readers of what and where the article is.

Like the contents page of Q magazine with Adele in the picture. I used my main cover line on my front cover to have the main spot on the contents. The use of this picture on my contents page helped emphasise the main articles on the contents and also enabled me to put even more articles on my left hand side column where the majority of page numbers and article numbers were. The use of captions on the photo also helps keep the contents page much more organised. Instead of having a picture just randomly placed and readers struggling to link the photo to a article, having the caption means the reader will know straight away what the picture shows and why it’s there.

The double page spread is very basic and uses conventions of a couple pictures and text on only one side of the spread. I used the conventions of the NME double page spread (shown below) to space out and organise the page. The use of one big main picture on the d.p.s was a convention in NME magazines. I chose to use the exact same formation of page as NME. Evaluating the use of it in NME pages it gives it a structured layout and enables the reader to read the text in an organised way without getting confused. In my magazine the main picture stays on just one side of the spread unlike the NME article. I found that it made it much easier to focus on and wouldn’t have the picture ruined by the fold at the end of the picture.  I feel having the text on one side and all of the photos on the other side makes it a lot easier to read and saves the reader trying to find the next part of the sentence because a picture is in the way. The convention of a quote being shown in bigger font was used as it split the page up, making it less dull compared to a boring long piece of text. The double page spread in NME uses the same conventions of quotes. I chose not to challenge or develop this convention and just keep it as it was. This was because I felt that it couldn’t be improved. With a whole article being written on one page the use of the quote split it up and make It much more enjoyable to read than if it were to be just one long, dull piece of text.

The conventions of pictures used in the double page spread shows every picture with a caption of what is happening and who is in it. For my magazine I chose to use this convention as it helps the reader know what is going on. The captions show how the pictures are related to the article and who and what is in them.