Conventions

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

When creating my magazine, I looked at the front covers, double page spreads and contents pages of the most popular music magazines on the market. By doing this, I was aware of the conventions that are generally used. I both used these conventions and challenged them. I chose to do a rock/metal magazine. Looking at magazines such as Kerrang! helped me to pick the layout and style of my magazine. In terms of colours, the only bright colours I used were mostly red and yellow. This is because they both give a feeling of "Caution" or "Danger" and they are used on most a lot of magazines. For font, I wanted a "grunge" style font but ended up using a bold print type of font, as it grabs the attention of the potential buyer and it's easier to read. I've used a messy style to reflect the type of music the magazine is about, such as ink blobs and paint drops. I found this to be the general style of Kerrang! magazine, which I based my magazine on. When comparing to Kerrang! to Q, Smash Hits and NME, it is clear that the kind of music that is being represented is shown through the layout and style. Also, the expressions of the band/artist on the front tells the audience a great deal about what kind of magazine it is. I've found Q represented many different genres of music, and therefore uses a clean organized style, so then it caters to the many different kinds of music. The only outlandish colour their magazine uses on the front cover is red for the masthead. NME represents indie music more than anything, and this is shown through the layout. The layout is quite distorted and busy, but the shapes and texts still have straight edges and it still looks reasonably presentable. Smash hits uses youthful colours such as pink, purple and blue. These colours vary, but it seems to always be very bright, making it interesting and exciting to it's young audience. Kerrang!'s front covers were very busy ans the font and shapes where very distored. I liked these features and therefore adopted these conventions. I also challenged the conventions of a rock magazine by having the double page spread and front page feature an all girl rock band. No magazine that I looked at featured an all girl rock band, and from what I know, there are none in the mainstream at this current time. So I decided to use this, to introduce one in my magazine, and add the colour pink in with red and yellow, making it link in with the band. I wanted them to come across as feminine but to still have an attitude. I also used the 'busy' style of Kerrang's front cover (which I based my magazine on) on my own, with puffs and buzz words such as PLUS!, EXCLUSIVE! and WIN! I believe I have used the knowledge of conventions of music magazines to my advantage. While using some, I have made my magazine original by introducing some of my own ideas.