Question One

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

• I tried to keep the codes and conventions of teen pop music magazines in mind when creating my front cover, contents page and double page spread, because it made it more appealing to the target audience. Despite this, I didn’t want it to be exactly the same as all the other teen pop magazines that already exist. To do this, I had to challenge some of the typical conventions.

Front Cover• For my front cover, I stuck to the convention of placing

the masthead in the top left hand corner and having a small tag line (‘A passion for pop’) just to the right of it. I also used a mid shot of my model which is another convention of magazines, and I put the issue date, issue number and barcode in the bottom left corner.

• As well as conventions of music magazines in general, I used some specific conventions of teen pop magazines. I stuck to the colour scheme of blues and pinks on the front cover, because these are the colours that a lot of existing music magazines used and they are popular with the target audience (teenage girls).

• On the front cover, I used sell lines around the edge of the page because nearly all other magazines do. To make it more specific to a pop magazine, I included one about a competition, one about free gifts and others about articles featured in the magazine.

• However, most magazines have a white background, but I decided to use a blue background. I decided to challenge this convention because although I wanted it to be similar to other teen pop magazines, I wanted it to be unique at the same time.

• I decided not to include any pugs or puffs because I felt it would have made the cover look over crowded and messy.

Contents Page

• There are several conventions of teen pop magazines and music magazines in general on my contents page.

• One of the most common things to see on a music (or any) magazine contents page is the word ‘contents’ itself. In a similar way to other magazines that I have looked at, I put it in the top left hand corner, followed by a symbol that relates to my specific magazine.

• A key convention of magazine content pages is the images. In most magazines, they have one large image of the main artist featured in that issue of the magazine and then a few smaller images of other artists mentioned. I kept to convention when creating my own magazine contents page.

• Another convention is having an editors note/letter. I included this on my contents page because I felt that it made it seem more realistic.

• The majority of existing magazines have the contents list going down the left hand side of the page, which I decided would be best to do as well because it makes the page look more professional.

Double Page Spread• One convention of music magazine

double page spreads that I stuck to is the large image of the artist being talked about. I used a mid shot photo of my model/artist, however I did challenge this convention by putting it on the left hand side rather than the right. I also decided to develop the convention and add more images. Although some magazines do this, it isn’t very common to do it the way I did. I did this to make sure my magazine was slightly unique.

• I also included a quote from the interview which is another code of magazine double page spreads.

• I have a small introduction and arranged the text and interview into 3 columns, which follows the typical format of magazine double page spreads.