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

real media products?

Sana Khurshid

To get my perfect Pop magazine cover I had to research and look at other

magazine cover, I compared the similarities and differences and from this I was

able to figure out the conventions of a Pop magazine. I already knew a lot about

Pop as I mainly listen to this genre so I was motivated to research in depth and

find out more about Pop so I could gain a visual idea for my magazine. ‘We love

Pop’ was my main inspiration, this magazine helped me to decided what pose

would be suitable for my front cover, I found a magazine with Cheryl Cole posing

with her hands behind her head with flowing hair and a huge smile, this

made the magazine seem fun and exciting, it pulls the audience in. So I had asked

my model to do a very similar pose to Cheryl which she did but her smile wasn’t as

big as Cheryl but it still made the cover seem lively.

Finally the images on ‘We Love Pop’ are mid-long shots so I decided to make my image similar to this rather than having a close-up of their face as we don’t see that very often on a Pop magazine neither are long shots used very often as we can’t see the artists expression clearly so it won’t pull you in as much neither would it feel very welcoming.

The creation of my magazine’s name was given to me from my target audience, I was losing inspiration at the point when I had to quickly decide a name for a magazine so I could start working on my cover, I had

constantly kept changing it because none of the names interested me until a peer had suggested ‘Paparazzi’ then another target audience had tweaked it a bit and played around with the name and came up with ‘Poparazzi’ which was very clever and it works well with my genre and the media product I was going to produce. I decided to set out my masthead similarly to ‘Top of the Pops’, I had it across the cover so it would stand out more than having in onto one side like ‘I love Pop’ , it also gives off the impression that it is targeting towards younger teenagers because of the graphic used whereas ‘Poparazzi’ is across the page and it looks less cheesy than ‘We love Pop’.

For my contents page I included four images of four different models to get a variety rather than using one of the same model as my cover page then it wouldn’t be very creative and it would seem like the model is very dominant throughout the whole magazine. I yet again used ‘We love Pop’ for inspiration, I made my layout very similar to the contents page with a few changes. I included the editor’s note to take up some space as it looked very empty so I looked at few contents page to get an idea what to write in an editor’s note. On the side of the page I had included a couple of images going down and in the centre I added a slightly bigger image. Near the bottom of the page I added the page numbers this is very similar to ‘We love Pop’ and it can easily be told that it is a Pop magazine rather than an RnB or another genre because they layout would more likely be completely different and probably have less pictures than Pop. I also included the name of the ‘Poparazzi’ on the top left corner rather than the left like ‘We love Pop’. Also I didn’t leave a big hige gap between each headline, making them close to each other is a convention of Pop whereas having big gaps is more likely to be seen in RnB.

The similarities between my magazine and ‘We love Pop’

As you can see above the magazines are very similar but I tweaked it around so most of the features would be slightly different to go with the theme of my magazine and to link it back to my cover.

Yet again for my double page spread I was inspired by another pose and made it very similar, this was from cosmopolitan magazine. I know this magazine is not a Pop music magazine but I still used it and had made some changes to fit my genre. For the image I used a fur coat I borrowed from a peer and had asked my model (same model as front cover) to wear it around her and slightly pose like Jessie J. I also used the same title as the cosmopolitan because it sounded intriguing and I wasn’t able to develop a better title. It also links with the image as it looks like she is a star rising from her coat.

My music magazine has been produced in a way where it shows obvious of what genre my magazine is. I used bright girly colours to show the genre of the magazine, it also can highlight what gender it’s aiming at which is obviously mainly girls. My biggest aims were to show my skills of how I can capably make it obvious that my magazine was Pop genre which was easy because I listen to Pop very often and I’ve read Pop magazine a couple of times so I already knew what I had to include to meet the conventions of Pop. For the front cover I had my model to have a huge smile with her hand behind her head, this made her seem welcoming and lively and it can be easily pointed out as soon as they see the image that it is a pop magazine. The image is bold and vibrant and is most likely to catch the readers attention first than any of the other features included on the cover. The pose represents body language showing that she’s in charge, she owns the page as she takes up the whole page and is ready to have fun this suggests that they whole magazine would be entertaining and interesting to read. I also made sure the angle of gaze was visible to the reader so it attracts them and pulls them in as it has an effect on the reader.

The title of my magazine is unique and grabs the viewers attention. I ended up calling my magazine Poparazzi, it sounds cheesy which it should because it’s a Pop magazine and the convention includes the idea of cheesiness and it sounds interesting. I kept it in cap locks so it would stand out even more and I was hoping it would have a big impact on the cover. I tried to fill up the page and make the features take up most of the cover to follow the conventions and I made sure I didn’t have any blank spaces. I also made sure the text and mast head had matched the colour of my model’s lipstick and carried this throughout the whole of my magazine.

The costumes and props I used throughout my magazine were not throughout as clearly, I could have asked my model’s to wear something else but they ended up working well within my magazine. I asked my model to wear pink for the front page but the problem was that I wanted to use pink text for my theme colour but it had clashed with the image so making it harder to read but luckily I also took other pictures of her wearing casual clothing and used it instead and it can also interest fashion lovers to read it as it would be something teenagers wear nowadays and it’s also in fashion.

For my contents page, I had asked one of my models to hold a microphone and make it seem like she was singing, I had her wearing simple clothing as I wanted less attraction from her clothes. I included an image of the same model from my cover page but I didn’t make her as dominant because she’s already dominating my cover and contents page. I had one of my models to wear my pink dress and hold pink balloons as they co-ordinated well together and works with the colour scheme of my magazine. And her image became very dominating and it stood out really well. Finally I added another picture of a model striking a pose with her finger to her lips, it made her seem mysterious and want to find out about the secrets on artists.