IN WHAT WAYS DOES YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT USE, DEVELOP OR CHALLENGE

FORMS AND CONVENTIONS OF REAL MEDIA PRODUCTS?

Nick Bates

FRONT COVER IMAGE

I have adapted my front cover around the music magazine of Q and have use a similar style layout. This enables me to have guidelines to make my magazine adapt around real music magazines to make the aesthetics looks as if it is a real magazine. As you can compare both magazines have a single figure on the front cover which enables the reader to understand that the main story in the magazine is about the individual figure on the cover. The front cover image also sets the tone of what genre the magazine will be due to the mise en scene e.g. clothes, background etc. My figure is looking towards the camera which relates to what a real music magazine would do. This attracts the audience to look at the magazine as it appears to be looking back at them.

MASTHEAD

One convention I used was a similar masthead to a real music magazine ‘Q’. I placed the masthead at the top of the page to enable the audience to see the name of the magazine so that the name will stand out to them. I used quite a short and one worded magazine name to enable the audience to remember it easier. The masthead also has a bright red colour which will stand out when it is on the shelf's with many other magazines, so the bright colour will draw the audiences attention to purchase the magazine.

ADDITIONAL STORIES

Another convention I have used is having additional stories of what the magazine contains. This advertises the stories in the magazine to attract the audience to look and read the magazine as it looks packed full of content. It also outlines the artists and bands in this magazine that will match the genre of the magazine, this enables my magazine to attract my target audience and use conventions of a real magazine. The stories are also in 2 different colours which attracts the audience eyes to the front cover as it will stand out.

ARTICLE, BAR CODE AND PRICE

Another convention that I used on my music magazine that would be present on a real music magazine are a price, barcode and double page spread article. The price of the music magazine clearly outlines how much I am charging for a magazine and I have set my price at a reasonable £2.99, this is because my target audience is around 16-23 year olds so I wanted the price to be affordable but profitable. The bar code represents the availability of purchase of the magazine as it gets scanned when bought, this would be on a real music magazine as they are sold and purchased. The start of the article has a capitalised letter at the start of the article. This writing is in a two-column gird which allows the reader to follow and read the writing more easily.

MORE CONVENTIONS USED.

The magazine contains quotes inside to persuade the reader to carry on and eventually read the whole magazine, this means that more of the content inside the magazine will be read.

The contents page contains images with page numbers on, this persuades the reader to look at that page because if the picture looks good then they will believe that the story will be good.

The contents page also contains more additional stories with page numbers to allow the reader to know what page number certain articles and stories are. This allows the reader to direct themselves to exactly what they want to read and may persuade them to carry on reading more articles/pages.