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

My media product is a uses a lot of the usual conventions of real media products. I chose to make my product as conventional as possible without it being boring because if it looked too peculiar I feared my audience would find it distasteful and wouldn’t purchase it. 
Front Cover

The front of my media product has all of the usual information on such as; bar codes, issue number and price.

These three things are present on almost every magazine as they are conventionally put on the cover, not as a design enhancer but as a necessary feature. They are in similar places to those on existing magazines; they are usually small and hidden away in a corner so they don’t affect the design space.

 Other conventions that I have followed are the masthead in the top left hand corner. It has been put there as it is where you start to read from on a page of writing, so in that sense it’s the first thing you see.

          Most magazine of the music kind has a main sell line overlapping the main image. The image overlap is so that the words can label the picture below. This is an effective technique that I have applied to make my piece look effective. However I have taken this one step further and made the label contain enigma code. In this case, I have used a rhetorical question. I chose to do this to draw the reader into the piece as they would want to know who the person was. I took these examples (below) as inspiration but developed them. They use rhetorical questions in there sub headings; I took this a step further and put one in my headline. Another reason that I used this idea is because I used it in my preliminary task and I got good feedback from using it on that.





My main image contains an eye line match. This is a convention of magazine production because without this eye line match the artist/musician on the front cover can not interact with the viewer and they feel disconnected with the magazine and its contents. Viewers of magazines like this connection because they feel involved the person on the cover.

          My magazine looks like a magazine from the indie guitar rock genre. I have designed it to look like this so I feel I have achieved my aim. The colours on my magazine suggest this; the bright colours behind the main character on the front as well as those on the logos and sell lines. Bright colours ususally suggest happiness and upbeat themes which contrasts the dark colours present on a magazine whos genre is metal. The imagery on metal magazines is also dark and sometimes scary which clearly is not the case with my magazine which has more in common with an issue of Q magazine.

                                          

Contents Page



My magazine contents page also sticks to the conventions of magazine production. It has a standard layout; most magazines contents pages are the same every week because repetition of the same thing makes the reader become familiar with it and then they become more willing to interact with it. The images used on this page all have captions, having captions on images is a convention. I have used this as it is a good way to anchor the images on the page and for the reader to understand what the images are about.

My page has one main image, it has been placed on the right hand side of the page. I have put a main image on my work as it relates to the story on the front cover. To have one main image on the page is a convention of media product creation as it is a follow on from the cover story and takes it further by previewing the article.

However, not all of my work is conventional. The font used is the same throughout the contents page and the magazine for that matter. I chose to keep the font the same as I could not find a font that matched my initial choice. Pages on magazines normally have two different fonts or in some cases three to split the page into different sections without drawing lines and causing visual distractions.  

Double Page Spread

            My double page spread follows many of the conventions set by current media products. It includes a headline. Headlines are necessary for an article as it is key to drawing a reader into an article. It is conventional because without it you'd have limited ways to address the reader. It is considered conventional to have a single image on a double page spread, that is why I have done it. One single image is just enough to occupy the reader but is not too little to make the pages look empty.

            Pull quotes have been included in my layout as I feel they work effectively and also because they are conventional. They preview the article and give the reader a sneak peak at it before they read it. This draws the viewer in as they may read something that they like and want to read more. Page numbers in the corners of each page are conventional and have been included for the benefit of the reader; it is a benefit as they know where they are in the magazine.  

             Not all the features of my double page spread are conventional. It is conventional that the article on the page is across three columns of text but my article only stretches across two. I chose to do this because I tried it with three and it looked visually distracting. so I left it with two. As with the rest of my publication, I have only used one single font. This is unconventional as different fonts are usually used for different sections of the page.