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

of real media products?

When beginning this project, we began by researching into different real life media products, Magazines in this case. This progressed my knowledge and helped me understand what the codes and convections which were seen and represented in most magazines. This was very useful as it gave me an idea of the basic convections I should follow to make it look like a real life product. While doing my research, I also realised that not all magazines were the same and the fact they all had their own different styles and sometimes didn’t stick to the conventional codes and conventions of a music magazine. This is how I started to design the way I wanted my magazine to look like and be portrayed to the audience. I have decided to use NME’s magazines to compare against my own throughout this is because, It would be my main competitor If I produced my magazine and is target at the same age range and follows the same Genre of music which I have picked for mine, So I felt it would be extremely useful to compare codes and conventions on a real life professional magazine most like mine and the magazine I looked up to when designing and creating my magazine.

Introduction

This is my final front cover that I made for my music magazine. I decided for my genre that It was going to be an Indie/Rock Magazine. I think with my Front Cover, I definitely used, Challenged and developed codes and conventions of a music magazine.

A code and convention of music magazine is the Masthead. This means that, the masthead has to be bigger then all of the other text on the front cover so that It stands out and gets noticed that it is the title of the magazine. The font for the Masthead is never normally used anywhere else in the magazine apart from on the masthead. Another code and convention is the front cover image. The person on it, is placed slightly in front of the masthead. This Masthead is from a music magazine called NME.

This is my own Masthead from the magazine I created called ‘Riff’. When choosing my masthead I decided to pick a font that was quite eroded but not too rock. As my magazine genre is alternative, I think this made a difference and shows the genre I was aiming for. I picked the colour Red as when I did audience research It was the most picked colour for a Indie/Alternative magazine. I made the Masthead so It would stand out. I also stuck to the code and convention of the person on the cover being in front of the masthead to create a more professional masthead and cover.

Masthead

MAIN COVERLINE

A main coverline is another code and convention with Music magazines. It is the thing that the magazine focus’s on and presents the biggest. This is because It is something they would hope the audience to see first and will actually want to look into. It is a good way to draw in more customers and attract to the public eye. On this one, from NME they have used the colours red and white, to show the difference between celebrities names, what its about and a quote. This makes it look more professional and attractive to the eye.

I decided to stick to this code and convention because it is very useful and effective. I also used Red and White as that was the colour scheme on my issue as it was a Christmas special and the colours decided in my Audience research questionnaire. I picked this font because it looked quite different and I knew it would stand out with a bit of editing. I wanted it to stand out a bit more so decided to put the yellow bubble behind the writing to make it more visible. I also stuck to the concept of having the artist and the description and quote in a different colour.

BUZZ WORDSBuzz words are used to attract the audience to the magazine by drawing their attetion by using things like ‘Exclusive’ ‘special’thismakes the audience want to find out what this ‘Exclusive’ Thing is, These buzz words are all off the same NME front cover. This shows that buzz words are used a lot on nearly every magazine cover as it a simple way of drawing attention.

On my magazine cover I used this code and convention, I did this to show ‘exclusive’ things and certain specials so that it would create more attention and draw the audience into my front cover

Another way of attracting the audience and something that’s used on most magazines is a free gift, poster, just a free item. This is because it makes the audience feel like they are getting more then just a magazine for their money and can influence them to buy the magazine. This free Poster sign is off the lana del ray issue of NME

On my magazine, I decided to go for the Free CD as this was the most picked when I did my audience research. I also made it more appealing by using bright colours and a picture of a CD behind the actual text.

A basic code and convention for a Cover is the barcode, date and sometimes issue number, however on this barcode the issue number is not on there. This is the basic information that the audience would expect to see. This is because its simple knowledge that needs to be put on. This is NME’S.

I also have put a barcode, date, price and issue number on my magazine, they have been delicatley put in the bottom right hand corner of my page so that they aren’t too big and in the way so that it wastes space for other things.

To make my magazine different to other magazines I decided to add a second large photo onto the magazine cover, this was of instruments which I then changed the format of so it looked like a slight overlay. This isn’t used on most magazine covers, so in this instance I challenged the codes and conventions of a music magazine by adding this quirky difference to my magazine cover.

This is took from NME’s contents page. It is a Band Index, not many magazines do this, so I would say It sways away from the codes and conventions of a music magazine this is because its not necessarily recognised when you think of a stereotypical contents page. The band Index is used to show the audience where certain bands are spoke about in the magazine. This is very useful and makes the magazine very easy to locate where certain information is.

I decided that I wanted to incorporate this into my contents page. This is because I feel that It helps show what bands are in my magazine and works well with my Indie/Alternative genre that I am going for with my magazine. This works well with this because, It strays away from the normal codes and conventions and that is what alternative and Indie music is about, being a little bit different. Quirky.

This is the only photo on the NME contents page. This is probably because NME like to keep their work simple and easy. They have used their main coverline as their main photo inside. This is to create more attention and grasp the audiences attention. It also has a quite long description about the photo and what the article is about.

These are my photos on my contents page. I decided to have 3 because this gave more attraction and appeal to my contents page. It also shows the readers more about the articles and an image to go with them. I have made sure that my main image which goes with the caption and artist name is bigger then the other smaller two photos. This is to signify that that the bigger image is more important.

This is NMES Main article on the contents page. This is shown by the Large Heading and the descriptive sub lines underneath.

I decided that on my main image which is going to be a big article in my contents that I would follow the same structure and have a main heading and descriptive sub lines. This is because it gives the reader more information before they turn to the article page. I would believe this is a code and convention that Is used a lot as using a Heading and sub line is commonly used on contents pages.

This is how the text on the NME contents page. A code and convention commonly used is the use of sections and content headings. As seen here they have used ‘NEWS’, ‘RADAR’, ‘REVIEWS’ ‘LIVE’ and ‘FEAUTRES’ This is to help the reader locate the sort of thing they want to read in the magazine. There is also use of headings and a subline to describe what each article put into the sections is about, It is a very brief description.

This is how I used to the sections and section headings to organise my contents page. This is where I stuck to another code and convention. I also did headings and sublines for each article and page numbers next to each article. To make my contents page stand out, I made the main headings for the sections look eroded and used my colour scheme of red to attract the audience and keep to my colour scheme, It also adds to the Indie/Alternative theme.

The use of advertising in their own magazine is used a lot and is a code and convention. They advertise an offer to subscribe to their magazine. Normally previous cover images or the current one is placed next to the text and bright bold letters are used to attract detail. This is off NME’S contents page.

I decided to stick to this code and convention because it showed my research into how Magazines got their subscription's and shows my abilities. I used a bright yellow background, I chose this because it would stand out and on the front of my cover image. I have used bright yellow to grab the readers attention in my skyline. This then carry's it on and shows the reader to look at this. I used a eroded bold font and used a red font for the colour so that it could be seen easily and would be the first thing the audience saw. I used my front cover as the photo used to show the magazine you are subscribing to and to add extra detail.

This is NME’s title for their contents page. They have used ‘this week’ to be different and it also shows how the distribution for the magazine is, as its very obvious that the magazine is produced weekly.

As I decided that I would produce my magazine weekly. I also decided to go with this, as it also made my magazine look different then just using ‘Contents’ I have stuck to my colour scheme and used a bold white so that it can be seen. I also added the date under this title. This isn’t actually commonly used as its against the codes and conventions; I did it because it shows the reader which week the magazine was distributed and then also is easy to calculate when the next one will be distributed.

A code and convention for music magazine content’s page is to transfer the masthead onto the contents page to show that its from that magazine when you turn to look at the contents page.

I thought that this code and convention was very useful and is used on every music magazine I researched into. I think it just makes the readers aware of what brands contents page they are looking at. I have stuck to my colour screen and used the font for the masthead to make another, however I chaned the text to white as the masthead colour is actually red on my front cover but as I have done a red banner you wouldn’t have been able to actually see the writing so I decided to choose white as it was the same colour as ‘This week’ and the date under this.