Forms and Conventions

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

Conventions are features which appear in all magazines  such as a front cover, contents page, a main front cover image, cover lines, a price, a date and a barcode. They exist because they are widely recognised and understood to be the normal way of things, so now they are what consumers expect to see.
Example:

These magazines differ completely in genre. Bliss is a magazine aimed at younger/teenage girls (age 10-15) and it talks features teen-friendly celebs, gossip and high-street fashion. Whereas Kerrang! is a rock magazine which is aimed at mainly males (although is read by females too) who enjoy metal/rock music (age 15-30). Although  these magazine genres are totally different, they still keep to the typical conventions of the magazine industry. The both have the masthead in a clear, large font at the top of the page, they both have a large image in the centre of the page, they both have coverlines surrounding the image and both have a barcode in the bottom right-hand corner of the page.




My Magazine
 I took the task we were given of designing a music magazine, and put my own spin on it to make it more 'out there' and more interesting. I also wanted to make sure that I was doing something I knew I could produce well. I decided to produce magazine that is a fusion of indie/rock music and high-fashion. I chose to do such a specific genre because I wanted to push the boundaries, which have previously not really been attempted by many in the magazine industry. I took influeneces from the music magazine Nme, and high-fashion magazines such as Pop and Love. I looked at a number of my covers from the magazines I took my inspiration from to help me decide what I did and didn't want to do with mine.

I liked the simplicity of this cover, but felt that the name of the magazine was not displayed clearly enough for people to remember. Although you could argue that those who buy this magazine regularly know it well enough not to need to understand the name.I like the general layout of this magazine, because it puts emphasis onto the person on the cover.  I was surprised that there was no barcode. The producers probably did this to make the cover look more 'high-fashion', but realistically retailers are less likely to want to stock a magazine they can't simply scan quickly

I felt that this cover was too simplistic, as it wasn't giving people enough of an idea of what was inside. Also, I didn't like the way that the magazine name  had been partly covered by the main image. I liked the font used towards the bottom of the page, because it looks elegant and gives the magazine some personality. However similarly to the 'Pop' cover, there is no barcode, which in this magazine's case, makes it look soplain and simple that it barely looks like a magazine cover.



I liked the general layout of this cover for a music magazine but, seeing as my magazine also focuses on fashion, I felt that there would be too much text if i chose to base my cover on this. Also, I noticed that with most fashion magazines, the cover image is taken in front of a white, plain background, so the image would be no good for my magazine genre. I felt that the large fonts used all over the page took emphasis away from the artist.

I called my magazine 'Shockwave' because I associated the word 'shock' with the reaction of people when a new controversial fashion-line is seen for the first time on a runway.I associated the word 'wave' with the reactions given from a crowd at an indie/rockmusic gig. Seeing as my magazine combines the fashion and music, I thought it would be a good idea to infuse these two words together.


On my magazine cover I chose to use a barcode because it is more likely that retailers will want to sell it, if sales assistants can just quickly scan it, rather than having to type in a product number or price. I chose my main font because the simplicity of it seemed very high-fashion. I chose to make the masthead font large enough size to attract my target audience's attention, and make the magazine name stick in their minds. A feature I used, which I had noticed on many fashion and music magazines was to have the masthead covering the photo of the artist slightly. I  did this so that either the masthead or the artist's face were noticed first by my target audience, and once they had seen one, they would look straight up or down to the other. I put my dateline directly underneath my masthead because this seems to be a feature typical of all magazines. I used purple font for alternate coverlines and the name of my featured artist just to bring the page to life with colour in a simplistic way. I chose to put a quote on my cover which I felt summed-up the overall attitute of the arist and was also interesting enough to draw people in.


I chose to photograph my friend Em because I felt that she had the right amount of attitude to pull off the artist I wanted to portray, which would be what my auidence would expect to see on a rock or indie music magazine, but at the same time she had the beauty my target audience would want and expect to see in any fashion magazine. At first I used the image from my front cover in my feature article instead, but then once I looked at a few more magazines, I felt that the simplicity and the attitude of the image would give my cover the simple elegance I wanted for it.


My double page spread stuck to the conventions you would expect for a high-fashion magazine, It was very simplistic. I kept the number of fonts used to an absolute minimum. I put my image and the actual interview on separate pages, because I did not want either one to take attention away from the other. I chose to do an interiew as opposed to an article because I wanted readers to be able to get a real idea of what the artist was like, this is a feature typical of most music magazines. I  used swear words in my interview because I really wanted to capture the controversial and outrageous nature of the artist I was portraying, and I knew that this would appeal to those who are fans of outrageous and controversial fashions and/or music. I gave my interview the title 'Glitterazzi'. Glitter, being a reference to my artists make-up taste, and 'azzi' to be a take on paparazzi which which we associate with chaos, madness and of course fame.

I wanted to keep my contents page incredibly simple, to keep the focus on the content of the magazine, I took my inspiration from a Vogue contents page, and then simplified it even more. This was the only time I took inspiration from Vogue rather than Pop, Nme or Love.I used two images of my artist. One from the photoshoot to give readers a greater idea of what's in store, and one from 'behind the scenes' of the photoshoot to show readers a different side of the artist. I wrote an Editors Note to create the illusion that I was adressing each individual who read it, to make it seem more personal which would encourage people to buy it again.