Question 1- In what ways does your media product use, develop or

challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Masthead From my research I noticed that all of the

pop magazines have a masthead that is bright, colourful and catches the eye.

Therefore I kept with convention by making my own masthead in a bold font so it really stood out and catches the readers’ attention

I also noticed there was a convention of where the masthead is positioned and this is at the top in the centre.

Because my central image takes up some of the space in the middle I had to position mine slightly to the left but still at the top.

I chose the name “on the Beat” as I think it connotes to the idea of freshness but still maintains the fact that it is a music magazine obvious.

Mode of Address The magazines I researched had a very informal

mode of address and used lots of slang, e.g. “freebie” and “Glamcam!”

I however have challenged this convention by using no slang and talking to my audience as if they are adults

I did this because I felt with my target audience being slightly older, talking to them as most of the pop magazines do would seem patronising. It would also make the magazine seem more childish.

An example to illustrate this is the splash on my magazine “Amy White reveals the secrets of her debut album” and We Love pop’s splash “Merry X-Murs”. Whereas mine is very to the point and sophisticated the other is almost pun-like and childish.

I think my mode of address connotes to the idea of my magazine being very based on the music and not on the gossip of celebrities.

Images One way I have developed convention is

my central image on the front cover. This is because rather than have my model directly looking at the camera she is instead looking into the distance. I did this to make my magazine visually look different to the current pop magazines on the market.

I have also kept with convention in that I noticed most of the photos in pop magazines don’t have a background and so I used Photoshop to take off the backgrounds for some of my photos. I did this because it draws attention to the celebrity which is what will make the readers buy the magazine.

Colour scheme From my research I found out that many

typical pop magazines use bright girly colours like pink and purple. Whilst I found Billboard magazine uses less of a strict colour scheme and instead picks a few base colours each issue.

I decided to challenge convention by using a toned down colour scheme of red and teal. The teal is particular is not as bright as most of the colours generally associated with pop magazines.

I did this again to make my magazine look different but also because when I asked my target audience they felt bright colours looked childish and immature.

Contents page I have decided to follow convention for the

general layout of my contents page. This is shown by the use of columns in both my

page and Shout magazine’s. We have both used sub-categories to sort the

magazine pages into. I decided to do this because I think it makes navigation of the magazine easier for readers because they can identify what section they want to read and find that page number very quickly.

However there are some elements of the contents page I have developed. Such as the amount of images. For “Shout” magazine it has only a few images but I decided to include more.

I did this to give the readers more of a visual insight into my magazine. Also they would recognise the celebrities pictures and so be more likely to buy it .

Double page spread I have generally kept to convention with the

design of my double page spread. I have noticed most of the magazines have a

text to image ratio of 50/50 with one page dedicated to each. I did this because it means there is enough text to be informative, but the photo is also large enough to create visual interest. If there was a greater amount of text it could look to heavy and might put people off from reading it.

I also think it creates a symmetry about the page which makes the presentation look professional and neat.

I have also used other conventions like pull quotes, the posed image and drop cap; which have found examples of in every magazine I have researched no matter the genre. Therefore these are just general conventions that make a magazine look like a magazine, hence why I included them.