Q1- The media product I constructed was a music magazine. Music magazine are used to show and inform people about the latest trends in the music industry. Music magazines use conventions such as a big recognisable masthead, and a huge main picture, usually a close up of a famous musician. These are used to draw the audience in. Music magazines also usually go with a specific genre such as rock, or punk. This helps a particular audience identify with the magazine and therefore makes them want to buy it. I used a number of technical codes in my music magazine, such as a close up picture, and used a black and white filter, these codes are typically shown on most real music magazine covers. However I used a number of symbolic codes as well to create a specific response in my audience. For example the person in my picture is giving an expressionless face, which gives the impression he does not care about anything. This relates to my genre (2 tone) as it shows the rebellious, cool attitude of bands and musicians from this genre. Other things I did also helped to create a specific feeling for my audience, such as the plain white background along with the black and white picture, the guitar in the picture, showing it’s a music magazine. These codes are similar to real music magazines as they too use a number of technical and symbolic codes to pull a certain target market in. I also included a checkerboard design for both the border on the front cover and double page spread and the background to my contents page. I used this design as it is commonly used in the Two Tone genre, it was first used in the two tone logo, and so the classic black and white checkerboard represents the genre. However I challenged the black and white colours on my border, by adding black and blue instead of black and white, this was to help rejuvenate the old two tone style and to try and bring its popularity back in to the new decade, which was one of the aims of my magazine. And also to make the cover in general stand out more, as before it had been all black and white (including the picture).

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

Front coverI used many conventions of normal magazine covers on my front cover. For example I put all of my cover lines down the left hand side, which is the place that they are commonly used. However challenged forms and conventions of music magazines by not going over the top with cover lines, unlike for example the cover below which uses lots of cover lines to tell you exactly what's in the magazine. I didn’t add many cover lines as I thought having too many would distract from the picture, also I did not want my front cover to become overcrowded with tons of cover lines. I included a barcode, date, issue number and price on my front cover as they are common conventions of a magazine cover. I also challenge conventions by adding a border around my front cover which is not usually done in most music magazines, I added the border as it helped relate the cover to my chosen genre and target audience. I also positioned the image slightly to the left of the page, this is common in most magazines so that the cover lines can be put on the left hand side. However the cover of MOJO on the left puts the image in the middle and the cover lines around it, putting all the emphasise on the artist. I used a close up shot on my magazine front cover to relate the person to the audience and to show how he is a important figure.

Contents page I again used a border on my contents page to relate the page to my chosen genre. I also used symbolic codes, such as having the biggest picture be that of the cover story, this therefore shows how that story is more important then the other ones in the magazine as it is bigger then all the others. I also used colours to represent the different stories, I did the same on the front cover, for example having the blue for the main cover line/story and having the yellow for the special edition. I also put the folio for the Special edition in the background of the text, this was to make the special section stand out from all of the other folios on the page. I also added folios to the pictures to link the pictures to a story, and the page, this is a common convention on most magazine contents pages. I also used a white text on a black background, one of the reasons I did this was to relate the page more to my genre of two-tone in which black and white colours are used commonly. Another reason is that the white on black brings out the text more and makes it more easily visible. In also split up important stories and sections by using lines that go across the section for example I used blue lines to separate my cover story from the other features, this was to make the story stand out, and to show that it is the main feature in the magazine.

Double Page Spread On my double page spread I used a wide range of common magazine double page spread conventions. For example I used a pull quote from my interview to draw the reader to the interview and highlight a specific point from it. I also used a drop cap at the start to break up the first paragraph of text. I also included 1 big picture on the right page, all double pages spreads include a picture and most of them include a big picture of the artist on one of the pages. I also made the artists name bold so that if someone were to flick through the magazine they would see the name and immediately know what the article is about. I also included a stand-first just below the name, this was to tell the audience a little bit about the artist so if someone didn’t know who they were they could get a brief overview of what they are like. I also only had the text be size 11 in the main interview. This keeps in with the conventions of magazine double page spreads as all of them have writing this small so that they can fit the entire interview on the page.