Question 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of a real

media product?

Front Cover

The front cover of my music magazine uses the form and convention of the real media product RWD Magazine which is a prime example of a similar genre of my music magazine. It use because it takes aspects of the music magazine such as the limited additional cover lines , the web site ad and the same colour scheme and creates another cover that is visually appealing without the technology that professional magazines use. The main use comes from the website promotion. RWD uses a lot of advertisements to remind the readers of their website available to them taking advantage of e-commerce and proliferation of modern day technologies. My front cover also uses the same feature implying that the magazine has a much wider way of targeting their audience rather than just directly via magazine. In addition another feature I used was the colour scheme. The vibrant blue/aqua on RWD cover indicated cool but calm feelings about the genre. I wanted my magazine to do the same however to challenge the convention would darken my colour scheme as grime as a genre is a more darker form of music; even though the music still catered for mainstream I did not want it to loss the essence of what my original idea was a grime/hip hop magazine. Finally another feature used is the word play of the main cover line. The main cover line on RWD is “Tinie Tempah Tears it Up” which has direct links to the pose on the front cover of the magazine. My magazine uses a similar convention as the main sell line reads “Scorpzy Taking over the Game” which has direct link to the costume as a Pac Man t shirt can be seen. It is a slightly altered version of the similar convention

Content Cover

The contents page was difficult as when trying to alter it as the example from RWD looked dull however the genre then changed too much to look like a hip hop/r n b magazine. So I had to use almost all of the similar conventions from the RWD example. The main use was from the layout of the contents page all as one text. I found this feature specifically allowed the magazine to become strictly a grime music as it was a different and almost like a freestyle of the contents much like in the grime genre. With the images my magazine develops as it takes the same structure and layout of the images above the content however it then adds other conventions used in contents pages such as a making a visual contents by adding page numbers to bottom. This then made it much easier to read my contents page as the audience could directly find the page you wanted from the image that appealed to the reader. Furthermore the images on the RWD cover are too plain as they do not stand out on the page as much, so by adding a bevel and emboss to the images they seemed to be coming off the page. Finally the development of the contents heading uses the same typography as the title to both remind the reader that they are reading my magazine; a feature that can not be clearly seen in RWD’s contents page.

Double Page Spread

My music magazine both uses and develops some of the features of the double page spread on RWD. Firstly the main feature my magazine uses is the layout. Some double spread incorporate multiple images into and around the text making it part of the layout. My music magazine places the main and only image on the left side while the text on the other side. This makes the text easier to read as it is all in one place. However to develop it unlike RWD by incorporating a colour scheme on to the text it becomes even more clear to the reader what part of the interview is a question or answer. Another feature used is the double pull quote both imbedded in between the text and on the image on the other side of the double page spread this is done because the same effect RWD achieves by engaging the readers from the pull quotes and encourage them to read further. Nevertheless my magazine develops the feature RWD uses regarding the image. It is obvious that a studio shot with artificial lighting has been used as it creates a yellow glow on Skepta, so instead of using another studio shot much like that one the front cover of the magazine I challenged the feature by using a studio shot in a recording shot. This brings both elements of the natural movement when recording music with artificial lighting used. I addition I then changed the colour to that of greyscale as it looked better than the multiple colours on the original image, leaving more oppurtinuty to limit the colour scheme.

Overall my magazine mostly develops and uses the similar features of a real media product. This is because when changing many of the features of the media product the magazines type and genre both change which then defeats the purpose of the media product. In order to ensure that my music magazine conveyed specific conventions using and developing the techniques of RWD magazine was most effective.