In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Magazine logo
I feel that my logo for my magazine uses the conventions of real media products. At first when planning my logo I was going to use both a title and a logo but decided against this when putting together my magazine. This is due to the fact that I believe a unique logo is very representative of a magazine and the extra space would be better to be used for stories and important information/ images that will appeal to my target audience. When choosing a logo I decided to keep the conventions of one of the magazines I researched which was Q magazine. I therefore put one letter in the top left hand corner of my magazine and made sure that is was bold and matched the colour scheme of the magazine. However I did challenge the conventions of real magazines by not using the same main font for my logo as i did for the rest of my front cover.
Costumes
In terms of costume, I wanted both of my models to be wearing quite casual clothing so that it would suit the style of the magazine and so that they would portray the people they were trying to represent. Mainly Joe represents artists such as Liam Gallagher on the cover of magazines such as NME, as he wears a similar style of casual bomber jacket. Therefore in terms of costume my magazine uses the conventions of real magazines. I feel that the costumes will appeal to my target audience of mainly male, indie music fans. To challenge real magazines I could have showed a variation between my two artists so that they had 2 different styles of costume. However due to the fact I wanted both aristis to come across in a similar way I did not feel that this was the right thing to do.
Artists/People
The main attraction of my magazine was Joe Daly. Like a lot of real magazines I stuck to the idea of having one main artist and story that was emphasised and made clear on the front cover of my magazine. I felt that Joe had the edge over Dillon in terms of a casual and indie look when it came to taking photos and therefore I thought he was the best one for my front cover.
However I do believe it is important not to rely completley on one artist and therefore included Dillon Caldwell as my second artist. In terms of the stories about the two artists I felt that there should be a variation, so gave Dillon quite a negative and shocking story as opposed to Joe's positive one. I felt using Dillon in this way was a good idea was my target audience of teenagers could possibly relate to him and take some of the advice he gives in his interview.
Content
I tried to follow the style of the NME interviews when writing my exclusive interview for my double page spread. By doing this the interview was a bit informal and laid back as I gave a short introduction saying were Iwas, who I was interviewing etc. I felt that doing this was a better way of interacting with the audience then just jumping straight into the questions with no background information. I also feel that I used the graphology quite well in my double page spread. At first I was going to make my title quite simple and place it in the middle of the page so that it had no real relation to the picture of Dillon. However instead I decided to make this a bit more creative by putting each letter of "im telling you everything" in individual boxes and adding the quotation marks so the audience could see that Dillon himslef had said this. I kept to these conventions of the NME magazine as I feel that the unique style of them is a lot more appealing to the target audience.
I decided the advertise Dillon's interview on the front cover of the magazine as it is one of the main stories. I did this by keeping the same style of seperate words in seperate boxes as the unique style could be representative a unique story. However by doing this I feel that I have possibly challenged the conventions. If there is a story in the magazine that is not to do with the main artist (in this case Joe) then a lot of magazines will just put "exclusive interview with...". However I felt that this was too common and that this would appeal to the audience more and show that there is more than just one main story and artist.
I feel that my front cover generally follows the conventions of real media products. Like real magazines, my front cover is taken up mostly by my main artist who most the attention is on. Then quite a lot of the page is taken up the text saying "Joe's comeback" as this is related to the picture and again the main focus of attention. Apart from the main title and the logo I have followed the conventions of having the same font for the rest of my text. I have also used a lot of the front cover to make it clear to the audience that inside the magazine there is a lot of popular and well known artists such as, "Jake bugg, Kasabian, The Courteeners". I did this as these well known artists/bands are well known and of a similar style to myn and therefore will be appealing to my target audience.
In terms of my contents page I feel that I have both used and challenged the conventions of real media products. I have used them in terms of page numbers next to different stories within the magazine so that the reader can easily navigate themselves around it. I have also included an exlusive section which features the Stone Roses like a lot of real magazines do. This due to the fact that popular and well known artists such as the Stone Roses will appeal to the reader. I have also included a section which gives the reader the opporunity the subscribe to the magazine. However by doing this I have challenged the conventions by not using a lot of images of my contents page, with the only one being Dillon Caldwell.