Q1,In what ways does your magazine use, develop

or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

By Nicole Tomlinson

Typical Conventions of a Pop music magazine (front cover)

•Masthead•Main image• Pop style• Advertisements • Cover lines• Issue date• Barcode

Here are the conventions of an existing music magazine (front cover):

Masthead

Main Image

Barcode

Promotion

Style page

Cover lines

Name

Cute image (attraction to audience)

The forms and conventions of my music magazine (front cover):

Main Image

Masthead

Name

Cover lines

Style page

Promotion

Cute Image(attraction to audience)

Barcode

How have I used forms and conventions of real media products?

I have placed the existing pop music magazine and my pop music magazine side by side so that you can see the similar elements and how I have used them from the existing magazine and interoperated them into my own. I have joined up with a purple line the similarities for example:

• On both magazine the Masthead has been placed at the top of the page on the left hand corner, this shows it to be an important feature on the page as it is one of the first things you can see and it helps it to be more visible for the target audience. The text is also of a similar size, one of the largest texts on the magazine itself which further proves the importance of it as you can see we have done this by both using a bold text to help it stand out.

• Another thing our magazines have in common is that we have included the Pop Stars name on the front cover, this links to the image on the front cover and helps the audience to recognise who and what will be included in the magazine. The font colour of the name’s is both in pink, I did this because it is stereotypically associated as a girls colour and it is also used a lot in the pop culture as it is bold and bright.

• I have used a bright, yellow star shape on my magazine to help promote and advertise what was being given away (1D poster), I also had found this on the ‘we love pop’ magazine, however, I was not surprised to see this as they are found to be on multiple media products and magazines and they use this technique as it is very eye catching.

• The main feature we notice straight away on the magazine is the main image, both images are placed more to the right even though it takes up most of the page, I have used a mid shot of my model Hannah where you can basically see the waist upwards which I find to be similar to the shot that has been taken of Tulisa. As you can see Hannah has both hands holding the animal teddy bear and Tulisa has both hands holding the animal of a dog, holding a prop can allow the audience to feel an emotion towards the image, in these cases loving and think the props are cute, the theme of cuteness helps create the teenage genre of pop.

• We both have cover stories that have been set out in the same way, I have used blocks strips behind the writing to help highlight what is being said and the colours that have been used are similar, for example the pink and white.

• The storylines, articles and gossip is all of a similar nature, for example, fashion, freebies, bands, gossip and love and the reason for this is because that is what teenage girls are into at that time in their lives

• One last thing that all magazines have in common not just ours is the barcode, the only similarity I could say, is where it has been positioned and it is the same.

How have a developed forms and conventions?

Although there are many similarities from the existing magazine to mine there are also places where my magazine has developed on its own and has differences, here are some examples: The masthead is not in large writing, it’s actually quite small

and the reason I did this was because I felt the image did itself justice and did not need a large text saying her name. Fans would recognise her straight away, people that are wondering would look for her name anyway. Another thing that is different is that it is also in a different text style, I chose a style that I thought looked a little glamorous to indicate that Hannah herself is glam.

My promotion star is a lot bigger as I thing the freebie is very important to the audience or fans, this is a feature that could help sell the magazine to the audience.

My magazine and the ‘We love pop’ magazine has both included a page dedicated to fashion, where as, I have presented this information different, I have wrote mine down into a circle as I had seen a similar design on a different magazine, however, WLP magazine has used images of the clothes ect.

Even though both our magazines have used highlighted boxes behind the text of the story lines, I have used coloured strips of pink and blue, I chose these colours as they fit well with the genre of pop and they work well together. Where as on the other magazine they have used white strips with coloured writing.

Obviously as you can tell we haven't used the same prop, WLP magazine has used a dog where as I have use a teddy bear, the reason I did not use a real life animal is because at the time the only access I had to an animal was Hannah’s cat, however, was proven to be difficult when the cat did not want to stay during the photo shoot. The best replacement was the teddy bear, it still went well with the magazine as Hannah was talking about her love life in the exclusive interview and the bear does have a love heart on it symbolising love.

Another thing that is different is the hair, Unlike Tulisa, I wanted Hannah to have her hair down in loose curls as to me this shows that she is in fact ‘letting her hair down’ and having fun, this is shown to be proven in past research that I have done.

In general the colour scheme is different, it has similar colours such as pink and yellow, however, as a whole my magazine has blue involved and as a whole is a much brighter magazine, where as the existing one is a lot more dark and has a lot of darker colours such as black. The costume an props are similar but the colours are different which also help add to

the colour scheme. Tulisa is wearing a dark dress, her make up is dark shades and her dog is a dark colour, where as in my magazine, the teddy bear is bright, Hannah’s clothes are lighter and her make us is very natural therefor showing bright rosy cheeks and her eye make up is clear,

How have I challenged forms and conventions of real media products?

As you can see, one thing that is different is the way the names have been presented on the front cover, on the ‘we love pop’ magazine Tulisa’s name has been presented in large block text, this was most likely done to attract the audience where as, on the ‘stardust’ magazine I presented it in smaller, more stylish, upmarket writing, and I did this because I felt that the title was more important than Hannah’s name because there is actually a picture of her.

Another thing I have included on my magazine that is not on the ‘we love pop’ is an informative page number on the front to lead you straight the most important storyline in the magazine, placing it on the front made me think that perhaps the audience would want to know what is actually on that page, therefore they will want to buy it so that they can see.

Unlike the We Love Pop magazine, the Stardust front cover has only one image, it does not contain another image of a celebrity, it only tells you that there are pictures inside the magazine, in a way, this could persuade the audience to go inside the mag and look. As you can see on the other magazine it shows various pop stars and which I also think works well as it makes the mag look more info packed and not bare.

The pop star I have used (Hannah) is clearly a lot younger than Tulisa, I have used a much younger person and I also think that she is quite the opposite to Tulisa, Tulisa is experience, sophisticated, sexy woman and has a lot of experience within the industry where as, Hannah is just starting off, she’s young, cute and having fun being a teenager, you can notice this just by comparison of looks.

The use of forms and conventions with my contents page

Here I have placed an existing contents page from the TOPOFTHEPOPS magazine and compared it to my own on the right. When I was researching contents pages in pop music magazines I realised that most of them are set out in similar ways. There are many similarities between these two magazines. Underneath I have placed arrows from both magazines to easily show the similarities. A few of these are:

• Both magazines have a pink masthead box at the top of the page, I did this to neaten out the page and to highlight the white speech which is also another similarity as we have a similar masthead.

• They both have a picture of our front cover on the page with highlighting numbers to show the audience what page number the interesting stories are on.• There is another picture on both pages, of another celebrity (One Direction & Carrise) I did this to give a wider variety of people within the magazine.• Both pages consist of boxes, mostly everything is boxed off to help contain and make everything look neat.• Also, I noticed that our numbers down the side of the contents are not in order and have been mixed up.• One thing that is noticeable is that both colour schemes are similar with a lot of pink, yellow and blue.

Picture of front cover

Picture of front cover

Picture of other celebrities

Pink masthead box

Rectangle contents box Rectangle

contents box

The development of forms and conventions with my contents page

On the contents page I have written a title for each number. On stories that I thought were especially interesting, I have included a little extra underneath to help persuade the reader to find the page and to carry on reading.

Both magazines have used a bubble styles font for the numbers down the side of the contents however, the colour scheme we have used for them are different they have used pink, however, did not I used blue as I felt there was too much pink included in the magazine already.

On the We Love Pop magazine their main second Image is of the popular group One Direction, I think they did this to attract the girls into buying the magazine where as, I have used a pretty girl instead as I feel girls aspire to be these women role models out there, they want to be the pop stars, so why not give them someone to aspire to!

On the picture of the front cover I have written the most interesting page numbers and also highlighted them all in a bright yellow circle, I did this to help out our fans as everyone loves a little bit of help!

The challenge of forms and conventions with my contents page

One thing that is different is the social media sites I included at the bottom, teenagers today are all on technology and are all using social media sites, this helps the audience to keep updated about the magazine and also helps me to sell the magazine as more people will get to know about it. I included the two most popular social media sites used to this da. I have included the well known logo and the addresses to follow.

Instead of just writing the name of the page, I have made little notes underneath the important stories to help attract the audience and keep them interested.

On the we love pop magazine they have titles for each section of the contents where as, I have just jumped straight to the point to inform the audience basically by saying ‘the contents is here!’

Here I have included a bright blue background highlighting Carrise, this highlight her and makes her stand out, also above her there is a quote that she has said that will be included somewhere in the magazine

The use of forms and conventions with my double page spread

Here are two double page spreads, one being an existing double page and the other I have made myself. I am placing these two pages together to find similarities between the two, so far I have found a few. The first thing I noticed is that for our double page spreads we have both decided to use an interview rather than a story including a large quote at the top of the page of what the pop stars have said during the interview, the reason I did this is for the audience to read and basically get a small sample of what the article is about.Another thing that I noticed was the larger letter at the start of the wording, this is used a lot in magazines, as it shows you where to start off reading and it’s really effective and looks good.

Both images of Cher and Hannah have been placed on the right hand side of the page and even though they are not the same you can see that both of the double page spreads have images and that they are not serious images by their, face and pose, it’s clearly images to show that they are messing around and having fun. I have also noticed that the colour scheme we have both included is the colour pink, this goes with the theme of pink throughout our magazines.

A few last things noticed was with the interview, both magazines have two different colours to highlight between the questions and the answers of the celebrity, for example, the question in purple and the answer in black and the last thing was the structure of the magazine the interview has been set out in columns.

The development of forms and conventions with my double page spread

One thing that has definitely changed is the amount of imaged used on the double page spread, on the existing double page, there is one large images of Cher across the page, where as, with mine, there are multiple smaller images of Hannah in different styles to give of the effect of a photo booth theme.

On my double mage the quote is an extra feature underneath the masthead, where as, on the ‘We Love Pop’ magazine the quote from the interview, is used as the masthead for the page, also their quote is in bright colours to stand out from the white background where as with mine, it is the opposite way round with the white writing against the coloured background.

On the existing DPS the se tout is basically, the interview on one side and the picture on the other, however, because my images were much smaller I included text on both pages to make it look more fuller, this also makes my interview a lot more bigger than theirs, providing more information which is always better fro the readers that are interested.

DPS= Double Page Spread

The challenge of forms and conventions with my double page spread

On my double page spread I have included a title saying, exclusive interview in block letters, I did this so that the audience would be able to tell straight away that this was the page with the exclusive interview on, this is different to the other double page spread as they don’t really have a masthead, they have a quote that they have basically made into the title of the page.

The most largest difference between both of these DPS’s are is the image set out, as you can see I haven't just used 1 image as a main, I have used multiple images and placed them into a film template to give off the effect of a photo booth. I did this because I feel it gives the impression of a fame look and there also really fun too!

Here as you can see I have used a background colour of pink, I did this to help fill out my page and to stop it from looking bare, where as, on the existing DPS they have not included a background colour and have actually just kept it white.