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

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Conventions of a magazine are the layouts and contents in which different media products are produced. when producing my own music magazine i looked at several different others to understand the layouts in which they would usually be produced. I took into consideration the layouts of text, bar codes, dates, pull quotes, advertisements and images similar to other distribuited magazines.The magazine which i was trying to achieve was NME, i wanted to create a female alternative for this and had to think about my models clothing and my target audience based on the models ages. It was important to consider the way in which i took my photograph for my main cover and the camera angle, because i would have needed sufficient space to allow me to place my text around my models body.  For example the way in which this NME cover is presented in terms of imagery is very similar to my own image with the added text around the silhouette of the body.
I wanted to use the colour red with bold fonting to attract the viewer, because red is usually seen as a predominant colour, this also shows that colouring the word "INDIE" in independant red, what my genre of music is straight away without even reading anything else. I done some research and thought that i would find out what the definition of "indie" meant, when i researched this i found that it is an abbreviation for "independent" and is slang for f**k. Fans of indie music, or "indians" as they like to be called, are passionate about everything, they discover a life changing band. This was quite interesting to do because the target audience for NME were also politically motivated and passionate about everything, so i thought that it would be interesting to combine my genre of music with the target audience.

The bold font in the title of NME is quite similar to the way in which i have used the bold font, for my title INDEPENDANT with the same positioning placed at the top of the page about my main image. I have used the same style of font in the date line to NME, and the colour scheme i have used for my masterhead and coverlines corrospondes similar to the 2 colours used in NME. Generally magazine's only use no more than 5 colours of text on a cover to avoid buisiness. The bar code is usually displayed in the bottom left hand corner in NME on most issues with the price placed along side it in a smalled font size ,free posters are usually issued out with NME or advertisements to give something back to the reader which i decided to include as a convention on my own magazine to promote this well and draw attention that something was being given away. I was trying to gain more of a feminine approach to the magazine NME, so for my own magazine i though i could approach this by using a female model with a similar pose looking straight at the camera like many NME covers do. Other names are featured on my magazine cover in the same way NME uses a plus column, to show that there are more people included rather than just my main model

The structure and layout is very similar to this issue because the layout appears visible and layed out in a structured manner. All the text is visible and shown in sections to make it easier for the viewer to follow and understand with each coverline included.


I have explored the genre of indie music in the magazine that i have produced. Even though my magazine is aimed at indie females from a middle class background, many of my target audience will have a cultural background, which is why i have decided to use the prop of a violin in my feature article. Below are some photographs of music magazines which have influenced my design idea's based on layout, genre's and styling. 


I have taken my inspiration from the magazine NME,my intention was to create a magazine similar to NME but lean it more towards a female audience.However i have not made an identical copy of this i have used several different fonts but taken the idea's of layout of texts, placement of the barcode, placement of the date, and termonoligy that may be used.  The word FREE has been used in the colour yellow with capitals to make this more predominant to the viewer that something is being given away, in the same way i have used the colour red on my main cover when giving away two free posters this attracts the viewer in the same way.The text that relates to the models corrospondes with her with a catchy title to make it more understandable "in at the deep end" by adding this title we then know that it is aimed at her, judging by the picture as the main image with her knee deep in water. In my main magazine i have done a similar convention, i have used the catchy title " how my music has changed my life" in which this corrospondes next to my main image, with the model wearing a brightly coloured set of headphones.

I have also made sure that i positioned my model in the middle so that i had enough room to include text's for my main cover, in the same way i thought about body positioning in my double page spread. The prop of the violin represents a middle class audience. The styling also suggests that i am representing an indie genre of music because my model is showing clothing of wearing frayed vintage stuff, fur jacket just to make it clear they don’t care what you think of them and indie fashion is very similar to bohemian vogue.

The people in the photographs who are featured on my main cover appear to be in the category of 17 - 25 years and i have kept my written text quite minimal and in sections to make it orgainised and structured in which it will fit correctly with the amount of white space given. For my contents page i decided to have different sections to make it easy to follow in logical order. i also looked at other similar genre contents pages and researched what headings, artists and features needed to be included to make a successful contents page.  I included bright colours to make it attractive to the viewer and only used two colours for my font theme, being red and black to keep it very minimal.