In what ways does your media product use, develop or challange the forms and conventions of the real media

product?

I drew a lot of inspiration from the popular music maga-zines of today. Such as;NME,Kerrang!,And Q. Through drawing inspiration from these already established magazines I have managed to mimic and/or improve the designs used by NME and Kerrang! As well as the article that I drew inspiration from that was from Q magazine. One of the first of the many conventions that someone might notice that I’ve used would be the mast-head of my magazine. By looking at this copy of NME magazine and then back to the copy of my magazine it is fairly easy to see the conventions that I have implemented or changed. For example, i have implemented placing the masthead in the top left corner but, like NME, i have made sure to leave space for some extra news at the top of the magazine. NME typically places buttons at the top of their pages. I opted to mix that with an image so that a reader could see the variety that my magazine has to offer. along the right hand side of the page you can see the little sell lines. I have two quotes and then the names of each band underneath them. I placed the names of the bands in a grey box because it made it easier for me to see them. Un-derneath that there is the other bands that are featured in my magazine. I used a large plus sign to draw attention and to make sure i kept that attention i made the band’s names into different colours. Magazines typically have their main article with some big news or a pull quote from the article, followed by some information about what is going to be place in that article. I used this by putting the pull quote “If you don’t give a F***, then you’re going nowhere” this drew attention because of the crude language, it suggests that my magazine is mainly for older readers and that it wont feature any of the little things that kids like. It also tells the reader that this magazine is comical, yet informative. This means that it advertises itself to its audience because they’ll pick it up and realise that it is a more comical and mature take on a rock/metal magazine. I’ve also followed the convention of having the front man of the band being the main focus of the article. NME will do this a lot I’ve found. My front man is Ciaran whereas Luka and Chris are the guitarist and the drummer. NME does this a lot especially with the likes of Alex Turner (Arctic Monkeys) and Billie Joe Armstrong (Green Day). That’s why I saw it as more fitting to use the picture where Ciaran is the only one looking at the camera.

My contents page draws a lot of inspiration and ideas from the contents pages used by NME. The first thing most peo-ple would notice is the “Inside This Week” title. I chose to use this because I felt that it’d suit my magazine far more than just simply placing the word “contents” at the top. I chose to stick with the overall theme of my magazine and use Red and Black for my colours. I used the same Silver/Grey down the bottom because typically magazines stick to three main colours. I have implemented a subscribers sec-tion at the bottom left of the right page. This is a little box saying home much it is to subscribe, how much you save weekly by subscribing and how you can get a subscription. this is one of the most key of the many con-ventions of a music magazine. its key because if people subscribe to your magazines you get more money and the only way that they’re going to see you subscriptions box is if it is on the second page that they look at. some magazines have them towards the back but no-one reads all the way until the end of a magazine, at least. not in one sitting. I have laid my contents page out like NME’s as well. The picture for my main article is the largest, with the pic-tures for the other articles surrounding it. The numbers are written in Red and they’re placed in small boxes that overlay the picture. I have also used another one of the key conventions and that is the editor’s comment. This is key because it gives a sense of understanding to the readers. it shows how the editor understands and wants to communicate with his audience. Each of the featured articles has a pull quote from their article. this lets the reader get a feel for what the article is about before he or she reads it. Along the right hand side of the right page i have used a big table-like column to house all of the infor-mation about the page numbers of the other articles that haven’t been featured in the main sections.

Another one of the many con-ventions of a music magazine is the poster. I chose to do a double page poster for the band that I featured as my main article. This poster not only serves as some-thing that fans can remove from the magazine to place on their wall but it tells you a bit about the article itself. The text “Starting a worldwide riot!” gives the reader a clear indication as to what the band is about and how they operate. The poses used by the models in this shot again solidify the front man as the key individual because the guitarist and the drummer are looking away but the front man is looking directly at the camera.

For the first page of my article I drew inspiration form Q maga-zine’s article on the signer Bjork. I used a similar textured back-ground as well as a large image of the front man looking up at two photos that are housed in circular frames. I used a very large pull quote as well. Pull quotes are very good conventions to follow when it comes to magazines. Even if the reader doesn’t read your full article, you can be sure that they’ll have read your pull quotes. Sometimes when people read pull quotes they then want to find where they are in the actual article. This then leads to a game for the reader.

Magazines tend to have small gig reviews featured in each article. I saw this as an op-portunity to create my own. I made it stand out by using a Red box. I also made a small summary down the bottom telling the read about tours and albums from the band. I even attached a website and said “For more information please check out...”