In what ways does your media In what ways does your media product product use, develop and use, develop and

challengechallenge forms and forms and conventions of real media conventions of real media

products?products?

I wanted the style and genre of my magazine to challenge the forms and conventions of other music magazines. I wanted to combine the two popular music genres: Indie and Jazz. I felt this would challenge forms and conventions of other music magazines.

Indie music magazines usually are:

Odd

Quirky

Slightly pretentious

Appeal to hedonistic teenagers

Jazz Magazines usually are:

Classy

Sophisticated

Based on music rather than appearance of the magazine

Appeal to an older, sophisticated audience

I used photos from indie magazines such as Artrocker and Jazz magazines such as Jazzwise. I also looked at various photo’s on the internet which represent the Indie and Jazz culture. As you can see, the images on either side of the page contrast each other. The indie photo’s I found showed cocky, hedonistic youths and the jazz photos I found showed sophistication and class. I wanted to fuse these traits together and create fun loving, individual image which has a sense of class and sophistication in the music they listen to.

Front CoverFront Cover

Although the style of my magazine was aimed to break away from other styles of music magazines, the structure was similar to magazines.

• I used a masthead for the front cover with a sans serif font against my cover shot which I felt added to the indie side of my magazine as it looked hand drawn and rough.

• The colours used for the masthead connote jazz as many of my inspiration pictures used deep colours.

• I used a screamer and kept simplicity with my front cover to connote a class and sophistication which aided the jazz side of my magazine. I reversed out the screamer to make sure it stood out against the black and white picture.

The photo I used for the front cover was duplicated on Photoshop and using the lasso tool was cut and layered over the top of the original image. This meant there was a lot of bleeding around the edges of the photo. Although, this looked messy , it also added to the Indie feel of the magazine and aided the ‘hand drawn’, ‘home made’ approach.

The cover star had a very individual style, which used elements of 19040’s jazz fashion and modern indie. She stands in a classic indie pose, leaning against a wall looking casual. She appears very confident and unique which is what I wanted the magazine to represent. The cover star shows the confident, cocky attitude of indie artists and the class and sophistication of Jazz artists such as Nina Simone.

Contents PageThe contents page follows the style of the

front cover. This uses real conventions of a real magazine as front covers usually have a running colour scheme and layout…

I used the same sans serif font as the front cover and used a masthead to show the month of the issue.

I used a column which is a structure for contents pages used in real media products.

I arranged the photo’s to look like old, Polaroid shots which adds to the rustic and classy feel of the magazine.

I wanted to distance my magazine from gossip magazines and therefore put separate headlines in a sans serif font to divide the contents into separate areas – all music orientated to show my magazine is for serious, possibly pretentious music lovers.

I used a sub-heading to create a fresh, quirky image for the contents page.

Double Page Double Page SpreadSpread

The double page spread layout fitted in with forms and conventions of magazines. It used columns, I used a size 8 font so that the interviews had a realistic element and looked like a magazine. I also took parts of the interview and placed them in bold quotation marks – a signature of many mainstream magazine and therefore fitted in with conventional forms and contentions.

I used a headline which used a funky, jazzy sans serif font combined with a sub headline in a scrawled, sans serif font to add to the indie jazz combination.

I broke away from the original colour scheme and used a mustard yellow and burgundy for the double page spread. I felt this aided the rustic indie element of the magazine. All of the models on the double page spread had an individualistic image, for example: Pete combines old farmer hats and odd tweed jackets from charity shops with an edgy, fashionable style. I felt this would help aid the individualistic side of my magazine and the appearance of those in the photos helped to break the forms and conventions used in other magazines.