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

Question 1

My Media Product:
In regards to my music magazine, I believe that I have kept some aspects of conventional music magazine products, like Billboard magazine, but I have also added a significant amount of uniqueness and differentiation when creating my custom music magazine cover, contents and double page spread. I have challenged several conventions including: layout, colour, main images and the masthead.

Typical Music Magazines

Firstly, my masthead. My masthead was inspired from the title of the award winning film Pulp Fiction. The font appealed to me but more predominantly I really liked how the two colours complimented each other. This choice of colour I feel massively subverts the regular types of mastheads as the majority of mastheads only contain basic colours like red, black and/or white; for example NME, Q and KERRANG! I think this choice of colour puts me at an advantage in terms of brand recognition. The colour choice of yellow will help my magazine stand out, like Billboard magazine has with its various colours within their masthead. Furthermore, the inclusion of the image of the black and red vinyl record to represent the O helps add to the uniqueness as a masthead and the brand. The vinyl record image links to the name itself and again creates an obvious brand image/recognition for readers. Also I think the inclusion of an image in a masthead can be developed in real music magazines as near enough no magazines yet have an image within their masthead.

Secondly, my selling line. The selling line I feel adds a bit of cheesy humour to the magazine. Furthermore the placement of it is conventional, this is because most music magazines place their selling line just below the masthead, for example The Source magazine below. I felt there is no real need or intention to be adventurous with the layout of the selling line as the conventional method would most definitely be the most appropriate.

For the layout of my magazine I looked to Billboards 2010 issue featuring Drake. As you can see by the boxes I tried to encapsulate a similar layout in my custom magazine. However, in my magazine I used again the same colours from the masthead. The justification for this was because I wanted a consistency in colour throughout (even the rest of my music magazine) to make the two colours a distinctive device for my brand image. For the left third of my cover page I have evidently utilised it in the traditional way which I feel keeps the balance between originality and traditional approaches. I have also used the right third of the cover in a similar way to the Billboard issue.

In addition, I have learnt from the 2010 issue of Billboards magazine and various other s(below) that it is acceptable to have a main image in black and white tone. Although it is an unconventional approach as not many have a main image in black and white in the music magazine industry; in fact the main use for black and white images is for special editions (e.g. Q magazine). Again I feel this adds to my magazines sense to challenge conventional forms of music magazines.

In addition to keep up the consistency in my product I have used black and white images throughout the whole of my pages. Ive decided to do this to have a distinctive advantage over some other magazines. I also believe that consistency is key to the address the reader and make them recognise the magazine easier so that was another potential justification for my choice of a black and white tone. As you can see in the images of my custom contents and double page spread below, I have also kept consistency with my choice of colours of text and design .

I would also like to address another unconventional decision to have no eye contact with the reader on the cover page. This , I admit, was a brave call as usually (almost all the time) the model in the main image is directly contacting the reader, as shown in previous slides. However the reasoning behind the decision not to have eye contact is due to the images to the right which exemplify

that you dont necessarily require eye contact in cover pages.

Another unconventional move I made was to have my photoshoot outside in the natural environment. I say this is conventional as most magazines have their main image in front of a blank wall/screen in order to make it easier for editing and to have or add a particular coloured background to the cover page, for instance this Billboard page to the right. However the Vibe cover page above proves that you can challenge the typical main image on a musical magazine cover. A contributor to my decision to take the photo-shoot outside was to match the urban feel/vibe that the models (band) portray. The prime example is the graffiti background in the main image on my cover page which I feel conveys an urban genre. This meant mise en scene, such as models clothing style, had to support the urban look. I feel this worked all in my favour as it added again to the rarity of my magazine.

As I have highlighted, Ive tried to encompass parts of stereotypical music magazine contents pages into my custom contents page. The 3 images I have chosen were all taken outdoors like most images on contents pages are which is another conventional method. I think that overall my contents page is fairly traditional mainly because there is only a little that you can adjust to make a contents page stand out. The only adjustments I made were involved in the layout, for example I used 3 images around the same size (most contents pages have 1 or 2 small and 1 large/main image) and separated the contents text.

My double page spread certainly doesnt follow conventional pages, for example the Lady Gaga exemplar is what the majority in the market are like (main image looking at reader with 1 page text). I decided to go down a different route similar to the Kaiser Chiefs to the right. I decided to have the models walking casually with no contact with the camera, like the Kaiser Chiefs image. I believe it is extremely unique as there are very few spreads like my custom product.

The dateline is placed in a considerably conventionally position. Although datelines are usually only placed in the either of the four corners of the page and likewise with the barcode. However the barcode is usually placed in the bottom corner to be out of site. Also as you can see above the barcode is my price. My choosing of the price to be 3.49 is influenced by my market research questionnaire and my research with current music magazine prices. The mean price for current magazines are 3.99. However, my respondents in my questionnaire asked for a price of 2.99 therefore I settled somewhat in the middle with 3.49.

Conclusion
To conclude, I feel I have been quite sceptical during the production of my music magazine. This is because overall I feel my media product challenges many music magazine conventions. I think the most traditional choice I made was to keep consistency throughout my magazine. I accomplished this by having the same font in all my pages and also the same colour schemes. Lastly, I think that in my masthead I feel that by including an image in the masthead could develop into real music magazine mastheads.