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

The conventions of a magazine are the typical features and styles used in the layout of the magazine.

At the very top of the magazine we have the Masthead, this serves as a form of title. It lets them know what magazine they're buying and due to the fact it's often in a very specific font style the reader recognizes it every time and becomes familiar with it. To the right we have an example, the masthead I created for my magazine 'Crue'. The magazine itself is a glam-rock themed magazine, so i felt the bright colour combination of red and pink suited it as they're often used within the genre. This is further pushed by the use of bevel, Glam rock is all about the look, big har, big boots, the bevel bring the standard flat 2D text out and does just what these Glam musicians would do to themselves when on stage, same goes for teh sidebars ect. The actual font is similar to the logo of the popular glam band Motley Crue, which is also where the name is derived from.



Underneath the masthead we can see the selling line, 'take a walk on the wild side', a sort of slogan, it has a similar effect to the masthead in the sense that readers will familiarize themselves with it. Underneath to the right we have the dateline which tells us the date, issue number and price. Notice it also has a sticker on it, due to it being issue number 1 it's cheaper than normal so potential buyers/subscribers can try it without spending too much money, the bright bold sticker stands out and immediately tells them it's cheaper and due to the low price many will buy it on impulse and see what it's like.

Next we have the cover-lines, these give you a taste of whats in the magazines. they often take the biggest or most popular articles and almost advertise them on the front of the magazine so people passing by and clearly and easily see if there is something in the magazine that will interest them. Notice on my example the words 'Bad Shuck' are blown up right in the middle to grab the attention of anyone interested in the band, this can then pull people in to take a look at what it says and perhaps buy the magazine.

Behind it all is the Main Image, in this case a picture of a stereo-typical 70's/80's Rocker in a pose again very typical of that genre. It immediately gives the buyer an idea of who this magazine may be aimed for or who may be featured within it. Many similar poses feature in real magazines such as this example of Classic Rock,
the model, In this case guitarist Joe Perry, is in a similar pose with a similar look.



Other conventions include those on the contents page and double-page spread, on the double-page spread sown above we have the main title on top of the main picture, the picture is of the same person on the front cover again in a similar but different pose. The main title and various sidebar boxes are in bold and red which follows the same cover scheme of the front cover.

The kicker follows the title as an introduction to the article, a convention that's almost 100% necessary as without it the reader is thrown into the middle of an article with no idea of what the article is about.

On our second page we can see what are known as 'Gutters' between the 3 columns of text, these gutters separate the text to make it easier to read as well as keeping it neat and tidy. There are pull-quotes which literally pull specific quotes from the text that may have some importance and blow them up somewhere on the page for the sake of grabbing the readers attention with an interesting 'stab' of information.

It has multiple sidebars to give additional information that is related to and relevant to the article but not part of the interview, for example on the left we have a sidebar giving information on an album made by the band of which the person being interviewed is a member of.

These features help create the magazines House Style, and one that i feel is different to those currently on the market, particularly because of it's lack of slang or a messy style layout as seen in some magazines. This would make it appeal to an older audience as well as a younger but possibly more mature audience.