How my magazine uses, develops and challenges forms and conventions of real media products …

Conventions I have followed in my magazine …

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‘Puff’

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Medium-close ups shots

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How my product is different from others…

I feel that the genre of my magazine is new and different from anything being sold at the moment. I got my inspiration from the magazines ‘The record collector’ and ‘Mojo’. These do concentrate on an older generation of music but, especially the Record collector, are just about where to buy vinyls and CDs and some stories of the bands when they were big, not now.

The narrative of my product has an informal feel and is fun and friendly. I feel this is also different from similar magazines as they tend to have a quite formal feel which makes them appeal to an older target audience, whereas my aim is to get younger generations into the music made in the 60s,70s and 80s.

However, major magazines tend to use the convention of writing In obvious columns of

3. I feel I have not followed this as closely as I should have and all the text and pictures in mine now looks a bit too spread out whereas columns of 3 would have been more effective.

I edited all the images I used on Photoshop which I feel improved the pictures and gave the final product a finished, professional look. In the first double page spread picture I cut the model out from the background as it consisted of some colour that didn’t go with the colour scheme, but also there were some objects behind him. I I then added a block colour to the background, the same colour as the logo on this hoodie.

This connotes the ‘new’ image that I was trying to achieve and emphasises the contrast between ‘old and new’ which was what my article was based on.

Before

After

Editing

Sepia colour scheme Throughout my magazine I have edited my

pictures by making them either sepia or black and white. Also I chose to use a ‘grainy film’ effect on them which connotes the genre conventions as this is how pictures looked in the 60s,70s and 80s.

I got my inspiration to do my pictures like this from the magazines I looked at, but especially the ‘Kinks’ picture below which uses a similar colour scheme to mine and is how I was aimed for most of my pictures to look.

I edited the second image in the double page spread like this as it is a large contrast with the bright, sharp image it is juxtaposed to, which is the theme of my article so represents what the article is about.

I have used a variety of fonts throughout my magazine, but mainly a serif font is used. This gives it the authentic look and portrays the genre. However I feel that by using this it may attract an older audience which is not my intended target audience.

In other magazines I have looked at, they commonly use serif font as well so this is a convention of the ‘older’ style magazines.

To make it appeal to a younger audience, as I intended, I could have used a sans serif font like the more modern magazines, however I feel this will take the authenticity off the image magazines image.

Fonts …

Cinematography

I have used a variety of shots throughout my magazine. The conventional Medium-close up shot has been used in both pictures on the double page spread.

However I then broke convention by using a long-shot of my band, consisting of 4 people, on the front cover. Conventionally it would be a medium close up of just 1 person.

I felt this challenge of convention worked successfully and portrayed ‘The Beatles’ image I was trying to achieve.