1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? (DRAFT 1)

Through researching the most highly rated magazines within their genres I found the most used conventions, and how professional magazines used them to promote and look aesthetically pleasing to the target audience. Through this I found the most popular front page layouts known as the “F” and “Z” format. I particularly liked the “F” format because it allowed cover lines to run down the left hand side with the main cover line standing out across the page, so I decided to base my front cover around this. 

When researching I particularly looked at Kerrang and NME magazine and took inspiration from the way both magazines set up their double page spreads. On one side they had the main article with “News” tabs and such and on the left page have an image relating to the article and I knew I wanted to set my article similar to this maybe having a quote or fact text box with the main image. I also took inspiration from Q magazine when deciding how to set out my contents page. I decided that I wanted to use large coloured rectangular text box’s to split the contents into different sub-headings and I also wanted to have images that would preview stories inside.

I decided to look at magazines that were similar to the genre I had decided indie and rock so I researched allot into Kerrang, NME, and Q magazines. When choosing my colour pallet I took allot of inspiration from NME and Q magazine because they were nearer the genre I was looking at. They frequently used the red, white and black colour scheme with the special change once in a while so I knew this would be appropriate scheme for my magazine. Using this colour scheme is very useful and I also decided to develop the use of the colours with changing certain letter colours in a word to make different words and different letters stand out.

Researching magazine’s that had a similar genre was very important when creating my magazine and also had a massive influence on my decision making because you can analyse and relate to why they have used certain conventions to gain an audience and to promote their magazine to the target market.