In what way does your media product Use, Develop or Challenge forms and

Conventions of real media

By Joshua Connolly

My masthead• My magazine has the title “CBA” surrounded in

a red box to make it stand out, this was made using Photoshop. Like many music magazines the actual title of the magazine is abbreviated to letters rather than spelt out fully. This can be seen when we look at magazines such as “NME” and “Q”. Using a similar design I was able to make my masthead look both generic but stand out. With adapting the design of other magazines it would catches their reader’s attention which as I found in my research are similar target audiences. I also found that the magazines that are appealing to a similar target audience as I am use a bright colour scheme with a lot of reds and whites so I used this in my magazine so not to diversify too much from the themes.

Mise en scene• My magazine took into account the mise-en-scene that

is associated with both magazines and the indie-rock genre. For when creating my magazine I had to take into account the sort of outfits that my models should be wearing, as indie is such a diverse genre I kept to a simple jeans and hoodie also to resemble the “rock” look I found a model with facial hair, as this is the fashion amongst many rock artists. Also I took into account the sort of instruments that I would need a drum to satisfy the rock look and a ukulele for more of a unique take on the modern music industry. The model for my front cover has a blunt expression that coincides with that of music artists as it expresses how they don’t really care what people think of them in an arrogant way. On the contents page one of my images has the background kept as I feel it suggests the indie vibe not only with the archway and the grass but also with the models posture and expressions which is almost as if there comfortable and not at a photo-shoot.

My front cover• The layout of my front page tries to both match and challenge the

conventions of a music magazine as it has all the features a generic music magazine has: A Masthead, Tag lines, quotes, the date, the price, a barcode, cover lines, footer and a main image which dominates the page. However with my magazine it challenges “the norm” by having the cover lines boxed of as you can see. Most magazines don’t box of the cover lines as they feel it isolates the text but I feel as though this gives me an opportunity to advertise more of what’s in my magazine without making my page look tacky. However I’ve also added in tag lines at the bottom which aren’t boxed off to give it a mixed appearance. My masthead is in the top left hand corner of my magazine which makes it appealing and easily visible this is like all other magazines as if the mast head was situated anywhere else it would not have the same commercial effect. Although the model on the front cover is one of many in a band I’ve steered away from advertising the whole band and simply including an individual to dominate the page on his own I hope to simply advertise more of the individual artist this way rather than the band.

My contents page• My contents page is a kind of hybrid between images and text this way

it expresses its media through different Medias. Like mo9st contents pages at the top you can see that I have included the mast head again but smaller alongside the title of the page “contents”. Beneath that I have the written h8ighlights which include the main stories in this week’s issue. Using different colours for the page numbers and what’s on the page I have clearly navigated the way around the page. Below that like many magazines do I have included a part specifically showing where the common pages are which are in every issue like quizzes this is a key selling point of many magazines as it is what readers expect every issue. The images however dominate the page like on my front cover I have one main image this is the image of the artist which is on my double page spread to show her importance. Most magazines only have small bordered off images of artists however I attempted to go for the more abstract approach of multiple images of varying sizes scattered around the page. Using the same artist as my front cover I have made him part of the page as he is holding up the article of his band whilst looking at the reader.in many ways it could be said that I have made the contents page a mix between the contents and the front cover with still for filling many conventions of a general contents page.

Appealing to my target audience• The people that I used for the images in my magazine were individuals that I had

previously asked to fill in a questionnaire on my genre so therefore I knew that they were the sort of individuals that would be reading my magazine. I thought that using people that would read the magazine to feature in the magazine would help my audience relate to the artists and get a better feel of their lives. By doing this I also allow the readers to feel as though they can someday be like the artists especially as the artists are quite youthful.

• Appealing to my target audience I feel as though they like to read as little as they can and I found that out when doing my research into my target audience. Therefore I put the main information in large bolder text than the rest to make it stand out all magazines do this any way however what I did was include a lot of bold quotes of musicians, as it’s them the readers really want to hear about. Also when writing my article I felt that more of a review would be more appealing that way I’m trying to give the readers a feel of what a gig actually feels like. I feel that a descriptive review is more appealing to that of a question and answer session which is commonly associated with double page spreads. So although I followed the stereotype and made my double page spread focus on one specific artist I diversified by changing the content. My double page spread on holly mainly focused on her however described more the night of her performance in general giving some of the highlight to the supporting artists.