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

 Conventions of a music magazine cover:

The cover is used as the main advertisement for the whole magazine, it has to be bright, interesting and enticing. An effective way of doing this is the main image.

This is usually a head shot from the chest up and is generally seen across all genres of magazines. This is shown in these examples of magazine covers. As well as this they will be looking directly at the camera or "audience" in order to capture the readers eye, very rarely will they be looking away or out of view. The photography also doesn't push many boundaries or seem unusual, for the reason that they want people to instantly recognise the star.  Most of the people featured on the front cover are celebrities within their genre. This allows the magazine to immediately grip their reader without even having to have read the headline or sub-headlines.

Another important part of the cover is the headlines and sub-headlines. It is important they are big, bold and interesting. It also needs to relate to the image in some way otherwise its an irrelevant piece of text. A few different fonts that interlink are used to break up the text and make it much more aesthetically pleasing.

Both the image and headline must fit the genre. For example on a magazine like top of the pops whose audience is young girls, they will not have an image that would feature on a more mature magazine like Vibe with guns and swearing and this would also apply to the language and topics in the headline or pull quotes. Linking with this the colour scheme must also match the target audience. If, for example, Kerrang! made a cover with a lot of pastel pink or purple the readers will be less inclined to buy it because their typical audience like darker colours like black or red. 

Top of the pops vs Kerrang!
Genre is clearly identifiable  via colours, mode of address and images 

Another typical feature that all magazines have is the barcode, price and date of issue. The price usually depends on how often they publish a magazine. A weekly mag will be much cheaper than a monthly mag.

I followed a few of these conventions for my own magazine cover. For example, my model was face on to the camera looking at the audience. Even though it is a female the photo doesn't fulfil the male gaze theory because it would be adverse to the message and genre of a rock magazine. Also, my cover featured unusual colours adverse to the conventions of a normal cover. The compulsory parts of the magazine like the barcode were featured on my cover as well as sticking to consistency rules but in terms of model pose and colours, it definitely challenges typical conventions.

Conventions of a magazine contents page:

Most content pages are very similar in terms of features. Usually they have the title of the magazine and is usually placed at the top. In these examples, the main feature is an image much like the cover but generally a different person to the cover, they're also bright and interesting. Most importantly it has to include a numbered list of what is in the magazine.

In terms of my own, I used most of these features because without them it would not look like a contents page and not fulfil the purpose. However, my image was not of a another person in the magazine, instead I chose to include photography of instruments as, personally, I find it much more interesting to look at than lots of people. Also, my list of contents was at the bottom of the page rather than a list at the side as I wanted to try out a more creative and unique layout.

Conventions of the double page spread:

A double page spread usually consists of a feature length article of the artist featured on the cover but in a different location, outfit and pose. Artists mostly appear in this for publicity, to advertise an album or new tour. The images can vary from one large image with lots of smaller ones or just a very large image used as a background. As these examples show, numerous different grid styles can be used but are mostly 2 or 3 column grids which is also the layout of my own. 



Mode of address is also important, depending on the genre, the way the magazine is written can change. A general rule is that it must be clear and easy to read for everyone but, the different types of language used is different. For example, a rock or grime magazine will feature some explicit language, innuendos or adult topics like drugs and drink whereas, a pop magazine may have more ephemeral slang terms and a classical magazine will have specific technical and formal language.

For my own double page I used a typical layout of one large image with the article on top but not covering the face of the model this is because I didn't want to take attention away from the background image. I used a pull quote to entice readers to read the whole interview to gain context for the quote and my headline was placed at the top of the page. It was also in an interview style and featured some swearing to further reinforce the genre of the magazine. Out of all the pages I created the double page was the most conventional of the three as there is very few ways to be creative with it without it being too overbearing or looking like it was trying to be purposefully different.