Question One

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

When creating my magazine, I was told, to make the process of designing the music magazine easier, to design a scaffolding of the layout of which I would like my magazine to follow. I wanted to make sure that I covered the general codes and conventions of a magazine of the music genre as the ones that are on the market currently are extremely successful so I decided that I would like to imitate some of the conventions that they have included.

 I decided that I would start with designing the layout of the double page spread – this was the easiest to create as the majority of the page consists of the feature article text and this was not to be added until later on. The main feature article consists of two double page spreads with the first page being taken up mostly by a large picture of the main artist and the next page consisting of two smaller images, the majority of the article and two box outs which feature a small review from the artist the article is based on and tour dates. I based the idea of my double page spread off of an NME magazine article about The Vaccines as I felt that this was a simplistic yet effective design.

The next page that I worked on was the contents page and I had decided prior to making the scaffolding that this was going to have quite a simple layout as this page is more to inform the readers than to entice them. Even though the task was quite time consuming as I wanted everything to be in line with one and other and also the positioning of the sell lines took quite a long time to do – however once it was completed the scaffolding looked very professional and followed the key conventions of other music magazine’s contents pages.

I chose to complete the scaffolding of the magazine’s front cover last as I felt that this would be the hardest to perfect and have it follow the general conventions of a typical magazine of this genre. I did a lot of independent research into other front cover styles from a range of music magazines such as Q and Kerrang and found a front cover made by Q. I particularly liked the style of the image and particularly the positioning of the subject on the front cover. The image that I have chosen to use is of a similar positioning; however I have enlarged the image so it takes up more of the page. Another typical convention that I have followed on the front cover is by having the sell lines down the left hand side of the page. This is something that is commonly seen on many magazines – not just music. This is due to the middle of the left had side of the page being typically known as the ‘sweet spot,’ and another point for this is that the majority of the population read from left to write and this is the point that they will initially look at.

 On many music magazines you will see a typical colour scheme of red, black and white which I have decided to challenge – using blue, black and white. Blue, even though is stereotypically known as a colour which symbolically signifies masculinity; however it is a colour which is liked by both men and women.

Overall, I believe that by following the key codes and conventions of your typical music magazine allows me to increase the standard of the magazine and makes it look more professional and high end which is the audience that I am targeting. I believe that it is important to follow the codes and conventions of magazines and imitating the concepts other magazines have used because these ideas and layouts have already been tried and tested on the general public and are obviously successful which is what you would want your magazine to be.