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

Colour scheme.For my magazine I tried not to break to many conventions but chose to on a few occasions to create space or make the magazine look tidier and easier to navigate through. It is a pop/ chart magazine, how ever unlike most pop/chart magazines my colour scheme isn’t so random or mixed up. Instead I went with black, white, pink and blue to keep the magazine more organized and easier for the reader to navigate through.

COVERSome pop/chart magazines can look a little to cramped making it harder to read or to focus on one thing at a time. So for the layout of my magazine I made sure it was tidy, but also had enough information and didn’t have to many things going on at the same time.

On my cover I tried not to break to many conventions as far as pop/chart magazines go. I have made sure the mast head is clear at the top of the magazine with a smaller heading underneath that reads ‘the party starts here’ (I did this to make the magazine more appealing to a younger audience) I made all the headings and headlines stand out from the photo behind them by using large fonts or putting a stroke of colour around the edge of the font.

COVERWith the cover of my magazine I was also inspired by other pop or/and chart magazines, so the conventions of the cover are similar to them. The only thing that may have broken conventions of a pop magazine was the colour scheme that didn’t have as many colours as most pop magazines. But this was intended, so that the magazine would look more tidy and clean. I also made sure I took the photo of the artist with a white background so that the writing would stand out even more and so would the artist.

COVERFor the colour scheme on the cover I also enhanced the artists make up to match the writing e.g. the pink lipstick. I did this to even out the colour of the photo so that it wouldn’t look to dull against such bright colours the fonts were made up of.

Contents The contents page in my magazine matches the colour scheme on the cover of the magazine, I did this to link the two together and keep the magazine consistent. I also placed the masthead from the cover of my magazine at the top of my contents page ,again I did this to link them together. I also put the heading for ‘contents’ underneath it to make it clear to the reader this was the contents page.

CONTENTSI did break one or to conventions on my contents page however. Not all magazines have an editors letter but It seemed unnecessary for me to add an editors letter to my contents page as my magazine has a visually strong theme. I also chose not to include an editors letter because it would make the page look cramped and I purposefully wanted it to look neat and clean with no cramping. Also my magazine is aimed at young teenage audience who are most likely more interested in the photos of the artist or are scanning the columns for their favourite artists interview.

An other convention I may have broke was not putting a quote with large photo of the featured artist ‘Poppy’ but again this was done to avoid making the page look cramped. I also did this because I wanted the photo to speak for its self (and make the reader more curious)

Article

ARTICLEFor my article I have looked at popular pop/chart magazine articles and have tried to stick to the conventions. I have placed a quote among the text to draw attention to the important of that particular part of the article. I saw in actual magazines the did this a lot especially in Q&As. Like the rest of my magazine I have made the photo look polished and clean with a white background.

To make it clear who the Q&A was with I place the artists name in front of her. I used a bold font with a blue and pink stoke around each word. (I did this so the colour scheme would be consistent with the rest of my magazine) I also placed another quote that is just passing behind the top of the artists head (I did this to give the image dimension and draw the readers attention to the writing behind her)

ARTICLEFor my article I also made sure to put my page numbers at the bottom of each page. I wrote the Q&A on Poppy Beamish (the artist in the featured section on my contents page) I also made sure the page numbers were the same as the ones that were labelled next to her name so that the article would link to my contents page even more.

The colour scheme is again consistent with the rest of my magazine, I also included the ‘HOUSE of SONG’ logo in the article (it was slightly altered to match the ‘ONLINE’ version of the house of so magazine)

PhotosFor the photographs throughout the magazine I made sure the artists were making eye contact as many magazines do this, however having the artist not making eye contact may not be breaking a convention it would be unusual and the artist may not be able to connect with the audience in the way they can by making eye contact.