In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Conventions
A convention of a magazine cover is a typically expected piece which has a particular place for example the masthead of most magazines is at the top of the cover taking up about one tenth of the page.
Most cover pages are expected to have:
- Masthead at the top of the page.
- Cover lines around the page.
- The main cover line somewhere visible, the placement of this text depends on the background image/colour.
- Main image often taking up the full page.
- The bar code.
All these conventions have a particular placement on the cover to either make them stand out, or to make other conventions stand out. For example the bar code is usually hidden in one of the bottom corners of the page because it is not exactly important and it spoils the look of images.
It is not only cover pages which have conventions, contents pages and double page spreads also have aspects which have particular placements; of course these conventions may differ depending on the magazine style, audience and depending on the article.
Most double page spreads are expected to have:
- Kickers at the start of the article to interest the reader and to help them find out if they actually want to read the article if it interests them.
- Article titles are usually based at the top of the page(s) in large font that interests the reader and draws their attention.
- Drop caps at the beginning of the first paragraph of the article, drop caps look nice; they help to improve the aesthetics of the article.
- Gutters (large enough to be able to read paragraphs without problems)
- Pull quotes placed somewhere in the text to draw attention to the most interesting parts of the article.
- Captions linked to images to help the reader understand what is going on and why things in the pictures are happening.
- Main image to draw the reader’s attention and to allow readers of that genre to find out what this article is about if they recognise the person in the photo.
- Perhaps bonus text or images to interest the reader or to advertise other, big articles or magazines (this usually happens with magazines who are owned by big publishing companies who new to boost the popularity of a different magazine.)
Genre
The genre of my magazine is rock, my magazine is pretty dark and in my thoughts, conventional.
To create the layout of my magazine pages, I outlined the main parts of these pages and then evolved my ideas from then on. I chose these pages because I felt they would appeal to the audience my magazine is aimed at. (Rock fans)
Connotational aspects of my cover, D.P.S, and contents page.
Title of the magazine
The name of my magazine is The Virge, this title is supposed to show that this magazine pushes you to the end; it’s got everything you want from the start to the end. It’s supposed to mean that my magazine is pretty crazy and fun, the kind of magazine which is going to blow your mind. I found the font for my magazine in Photoshop; the name of the font is Hard Rock I chose this font because it fitted well with the area and the size of the name “the virge” and because it was I kind of club font which looked scruffy and rushed, which makes the magazine look more like it is disobeying the rules on having to be neat and perfect.
Mise-en-sine of images
Costumes and props
For my images I got two of my friends and asked them to dress in clothes which would be thought of as fashionable to the rock community. They wore black shirts, black jeans and fedora hats, just generally dark clothing which is relatable to my audience.
I set them up with these props:
- Bass guitars
- Electric guitars
- Amplifiers
Honestly I didn’t have a wide variety of choices with the props; I only had 2 electric guitars, a bass guitar and an amplifier. I made them switch the guitars around so that it seemed a lot more realistic because rock band members don’t just have 1 guitar.
People in photo’s
Most of my photos are taken with a subjective gaze, sometimes I took pictures of them looking down at the camera at sometimes looking at eye level. I tried to take a large variety of different pictures with them in different poses and with different props so that I could certainly fit in pictures wherever I wanted them.
Masthead font and placement
My masthead font is called “Hard Rock”, I chose this font because it is scruffy and rushed and it fits the genre of my magazine, it shows a kind of “I don’t care” attitude which is exactly the font which I needed for my magazine. I placed the masthead at the top of the magazine and edited it to fit about one tenth of the magazine height, I did this to keep to the conventions of average magazine covers and to make sure that the title of the magazine is read first.
Written content
In my written content I have used informal language which my audience would understand and find entertaining to read, I have used occasional swearing but not too much to make the reader think that the makers of this magazine are no better than them and that they can relate to them, with their genre (rock) their language (swearing, informal), these small parts in the text can boost and plummet the sales of the magazine. I chose a medium length article because not all people are interested by text, a lot of people (especially my audience) are interested in images and bright colours, and these things attract readers. My article is a medium length because it is specifically created for my target audience (rock fans) who are in the C/D section of the socio-economic scale which means that they would not like large amounts of fonts and would prefer a wide variety of different pictures.
Music genre and how the magazine suggests it
It is very important for magazines to immediately show the genre of their magazine in a variety of different ways for example something simple like the brightness of your magazine could show a different music genre (dark magazines could be accidentally presented as gothic). It is important to show the right genre, if someone thinks it is a different genre to what you made it to be then the readers you are looking for may look away from your magazine because it is presented wrong and the fans you attract will be put off because the articles are written for a different audience.
Contents page
For my contents page I have tried to follow the conventions of an average contents page, I have tried to use a wide variety of images and reduce the amount of text on the page to fit the requirements of my target audience and to make sure that the page easily shows the genre of my magazine as well as guiding my readers to the most interesting and new parts of this issue. I used a paper texture to make the page seem scruffy and untidy, this will attract rock readers. I placed the titles and descriptions on the left inside a column to allow the readers to find what they are interested in this magazine easily. I have chosen a main image to take up about one third of the page to attract the reader’s attention towards the main article of this issue; I have captioned the photo to link it to the page number of the article and also the brief description in the left hand side column of the contents page. I traced the outlines of the main features of the contents page from a different magazine to make an outline for my contents page so that I would have a template from an official magazine that I could adapt to my magazine and change to fit my pictures.
Double page spread
With my double page spread I took a different double page spread made by the Kerrang magazine and outlined the main aspects of the spread such as the title placement, size the placement of the main image, the placement of the text and other extra’s on the page. This helped me to make my spread look more professional and it saved me a lot of time from thinking about the layout. Through the development of the spread I changed this layout to fit my images and the amount of text I had. I made this spread a lot darker but I used the same paper texture as I used on my cover and my contents page so that they would look similar. I used a small amount of images on this page and put large amounts of text (the main article and the side column which explains the stories behind the songs) I have outlined the images placed around the page to help make them stand out, the background colour almost camouflages them so that you can’t see them however outlining them and brightening them helps to fix this problem.
House style
The overall style of my magazine is made to look scruffy, untidy and rushed as if no one cared about what it looks like, as if someone wanted to get it out of the way and done so that they could do whatever they wanted. The overall view of my magazine is associated with my audience because of the way it relates with them with their stereotypical “I don’t care” attitude.
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