Qu1) - In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

• The media product I developed was a rock/ alternative music magazine named “B-side.” The magazine uses and fits the conventions of music magazines and magazines in general.

Front Cover• On my front cover I used a very large header, spread across

the width of the top of the page. The colours of the header are red and white. I also had a bleed through from the main image over the header. Most of the magazines I researched into featured either this, or the bleed of the picture going behind the header (as pictured.) NME and Kerrang! (both rock magazine,) also feature a similar colour scheme to mine in their headers/ logos (blacks, whites, and reds.)

• On my front cover I also featured the mid shot (of the girl in the double page spread,) as the main image. Although this did fit in with conventions enough so that it was clearly still a music magazine, it was more typical, I found, when a magazines main selling point was one artist, to have a close up rather than a mid pressumably to add more emphasis to the artist. The reason I did this, however, was to add more emphasis to her body and to the prop she is holding (the guitar.) This is because the articles main focus is her sexuality (the fact she is a woman,) and her music (hence the guitar.)

• In regards to props, I used a guitar on the front cover. Lots of music magazines did include the artists holding props such as instruments, however, these were meanly magazines such as “Kerrang!” whose target audience is much younger than some of the other magazines I researched into. My target audience (although ranging up to people as old as 21,) started at 15 year olds, so for this reason I thought it would be suitable to include one and I could attract the older buyers with different features.

• I also used sell-lines at the bottom of my front cover to advertise other features within the magazine without overcrowding the page. These can be seen in many other magazines of similar genre.

• I also included the buzz word “exclusive” in bold on my title on my front cover – introducing the pull quote for the main image. Buzz words were found in similar styles on almost all of the magazines I researched into. (B-Side, Q magazine, NME, Kerrang!) However as shown below, mine wasn’t as bold, and the typography on mine wasn’t as detailed and extravogent as most of the others. This was because I didn’t want to make my page too overcrowded or details as I wanted to attract a more mature audience.

Contents page• To compare my contents pages to others overall I’ve lined them up against

contents pages from the magazines “Mojo,” “Kerrang!” and “NME.”

• At first glance my contents page does fit in with the general conventions. As shown above, the images are in line and the page numbers are juxtaposed with the images to create anchorage and the titles have blocks of text behind them. However the others seem busier than mine; hence it would appear, to make them fit in with the format of a real contents page more efficiently I should have included more text and maybe considered an advertisement of an editor’s letter. In my final audience feedback questionnaire, I also discovered that a significant amount would have preferred my contents page if it had more images.

• The image (below,) shows a close-up of my the title to my contents page. The title is around the same size as most others and is at the top of the page, as usually seen. However, the colours of my contents page aren’t usually found as I have split the page in half with red and white – I have also inverted the fill and outline of the title. I think this fits in well with my magazine as it makes it more edgy and gives it a more alternative feel. I have also juxtaposed the logo of the magazine in the top left corner, next to the title. I saw this in a few other magazines (but not many,) such as NME (see above,) and thought the repetition of the logo worked well to emphasise the magazine and make the top of the page appear more full.

• The image to the right shows the other titles I included in my contents page. The colour scheme and typography (bold and in a larger font size than the other text,) resembles the titles from NME and Kerrang! shown on the right. However I only included two titles in my contents page as I wanted to make it simple for the reader to navigate to as in my research I discovered lots of readers find contents pages too difficult to follow easily.

Double Page Spread• To analyse how similar my double page spread looked in comparison

to the ones within my research, I have shown them together below:

• My double page spread doesn’t particularly resemble any of these specifically as the second and third image are from Mojo and Vibe, who have a reasonably old target audience, (Mojo’s target audience are generally over the age of 21.) These double page spreads, I noticed, tend to be a little void of colour (featuring colour scheme like greyscale, and simply laid-out with little images. The bottom right DPS belongs to Kerrang magazine, and is much different to the other two. It contains much more colour (some of which clash,) a wider range of typography and numerous images. Kerrang! Have a much younger audience, starting at 15. As my target readership will vary (but start at 15, like Kerrang’s,) I tried to fit the conventions of both of these formats. • The image shows my title which is also a pull quote from the article. As you can see from the images above, most of the DPSs in my research had titles (some including pulling techniques such as puns.) However, as my artist was a new one – I didn’t think a pun on her name or a title about her would be particularly enticing for a reader – so instead I used a pull quote as the title for the article, which I think worked well. I also made the text almost image like (over blocks of black) and the quotation marks extremely big – this effected the graphology and made the appearance much more attractive.

General Conventions• All the pages of my magazine also featured some general magazine

conventions that were found across each of the publishers and magazines I researched.

- Barcode and price on front cover – practical for selling.

- Page numbers at the bottom of each page – excluding the contents and FC. These are sometimes found in other places (Eg. The top or the corners) but I wanted to make them clear and easy to find, whilst leaving room for other items on the page.

- A4 paper – All of the magazines I looked into were A4 (presumably because this was a practical size – small enough to hold comfortably and big enough to be able to read the text.