Essay Question 1

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

Transcript:
When thinking about my magazine I decided that I did not want to subvert from the conventions of a typical Indie/Rock music magazine. I concluded that I wanted to make my magazine stand out from other real media products, therefore I did not simply 'copy' what I saw in other Indie/Rock magazines. I decided to refer to indie/rock magazines such as Q or NME as guides, but to present the elements I had found in a different way to make my own magazine stand out.
I decided that my front cover was going to use a lot of the typical conventions of a real media product because I wanted my magazine to look realistic and convincing. To achieve this, I included a barcode and prices and even a website to make the magazine appear more real. I even included international prices to convey that it would be a very successful, professional magazine and also to give it global appeal. The masthead is at the top of my front cover, just like a normal music magazine.
I think that my front cover uses the typical forms and conventions of a Indie/Rock music magazine and this is evident due to the way I have placed the sell lines. Typically, Indie/Rock magazines include lots of sell lines, very closely placed together. Also, many sell lines in NME and Q are lists of artists and bands featured in the magazine. I chose to include this in my magazine, which you can see on the left side of my front cover. 
For my contents page, I conformed to the conventions of Indie/Rock magazines due to the similar layout I have chosen to include. After researching music magazines such as NME and Q I knew that I wanted to make the contents page quite full and busy. I decided very quickly that I wanted to make my contents page very busy (which NME does constantly in their issues) however I did not want to make the contents page descriptions too detailed because then my page would become too crowded and I did not want to take the focus away from my image. In magazines like NME, the contents pages look more like lists, which I knew was not the entirely the direction I wanted to go in; therefore I kept the concept, but simplified it slightly to make it easier to read. I have also included ways that the reader can access the magazines contents from social networks like Twitter and Facebook to make it relevant with social media and give my readers more of an opportunity to access the magazine. I have also included an image of the cover star as my background, as well as an image of another artist featured to emphasise the variety of bands and artists included in the magazine.
 For each of my double-page spreads I focused mainly on the image I was going to use rather than the fonts that were going to be used for pull-quotes and interviews, which magazines like NME mainly focus on. When improving my double-page spreads I intend to put more focus into the fonts, so that I can use typical conventions from real media products like NME as well as using attractive and appealing images to catch my readers' eye. Also, for the each double-page spread my model was wearing different clothing, which is what a real media product would do also. I felt that I wanted to include this convention because it makes the images more versatile and interesting.