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

MEGAN FINCH

The similarities which my magazine cover shares with the Top of the Pops magazine is the layout. I have a similar main image, similar three boxes on the left and similar stories. My images are also high quality and work well on the cover, both have direct gaze and are looking at the buyer. I have changed the location of my pictures and some of the bubbles so that more of my picture is visible.

Conventional Structures

The conventional structure of magazines usually include a main heading, picture and mast head. My magazine has a conventional structure which makes it look more realistic, it has a mast heading, main heading and picture which is shown on the left.My main image was used to convey the pop music genre to the youngaudience by including the appearance of the models in order to attract theaudience to looking and reading the magazine and the position of it also is similar to TOTPs.

MastheadMy mast head is similar to the TOTP one, with my own BBC logo. ‘TWEEN’ means young teenagers which will appeal to my younger audiences.Cover LinesMy cover lines advertise the stories inside the magazine, I draw the reader in with quotes and pictures from the story.Advert This advert will attract the reader to the article about ways they can feel beautiful, it involves the reader.

BannerThe banner at the top of the magazine gives my own BBC logo and gives the conventional idea of a typical top of the pops magazine.

Conventional MagazineBar code, issue number and price of the magazine

Cover Lines‘World Exclusive’ is in its own bubble and supports the main headline making the story anchor the audience.

Cover PictureThe cover picture meets the target audience and features two ‘pop stars’. The direct gaze to the audience draws them in and the appearance matches the cover.

Structure and LayoutPastel colours attract the young girl audience, and my structure and lay out is mainly down the left hand side like the examplebelow.

Front Cover Inspiration

Top of the Pops was my inspiration for my magazine. The style of the magazines and colours make it obvious to the buyers that the target audience is aimed at young girls between the age of 11 and 15. I chose this magazine because I like the fun colours and pictures which are dotted around the cover, it took a lot of photo shoots and a lot of hours spent to make my magazine cover as professional but great as the Top of the Pops ones. I particularly like that the primary colours of the magazine cover changes in each issue but with mine I was basing the design around pink, blue and cream colours.I made my models pop stars because in Top of the Pops, female pop stars are what come up so often. I asks my models to wear dresses and then made the colours bolder and the blemishes disappear using Photoshop. It was difficult to make my cover without going overboard with text and images, seeing as the conventional TOTP magazine is crowded by text and my cover challenges that. I challenged this conventional structure because I preferred my cover looking neater and more formal.I was able to research TOTP magazines at: http://www.totpmag.com/

Contents Page Research Material

My contents page is in the style of the Top of the Pops contents which is under my research material. I wanted my layout to be similar which it is. Despite my magazine being for a younger audience, I added a ‘Dior’ advert to appeal to my female audience. The typical TOTP’s contents page will have lots of pink and lots of text which I have included in my own.I thought that a better idea would be to include headings related around music, so I have changed the text box headings to pop star gossip and we love music but keeping the basic idea of the TOTP’s. I wanted my text to go down in columns to make it the most conventional magazine possible and the text bubbles to give offers and chance to win prizes which you see in a lot of children magazines.The text appeals to young readers, and highlighting the text as they do in TOTP’s contents page attracts them to certain stories.

The models appear to my audience, still using teenage ‘pop stars’ to draw my readers into the magazine and want to turn to the page which their story is on. The colours work well and relate back to my cover page and double page spread. I think that my contents page does fit in with conventional structures, it offers a wide variety of stories and pictures and an advert which will appear in TOTP magazines.

The ‘Dior’ advert I made matches conventional adverts, although the model does not have eye contact with the audience, I feel that the two pictures on the actual contents page still draw the reader in seeing as most attention should be on that page.

I had to make my magazine look more like a music magazine rather than seem like a teenage fashion magazine, I included stories about music artists and bands and offers to win concert tickets to reinforce the music magazine it is.

Cover lines Wins and exclusive offers over my magazine advertising chances to win concert tickets and interviews with bands.

The page numbers are stand out and make it obvious which page the stories are on, I laid out the contents page similar to top of the pops and also the text is highlighted to make certain aspects stand out.

The text boxes stand out as I have added a drop shadow on InDesign to make is seem more 3D like, also top of the pops have drop shadows to make their text stand out.