In what ways does your media product use,

develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

The title of the magazine:

Above is my magazine title, ‘OUTRAGE’ and a magazine that shares the same genre of music and same style of audience as me, ‘KERRANG!’s title.

After a long debate over which word I should use as my title, I decided on Outrage. Personally I think it works, because it’s full off attitude and also the word ‘outrageous’ is known to mean ‘passing reasonable bounds; intolerable or shocking’ and I thought that this term might make people intrigued and want to read inside to see if it really is ‘crossing the boundaries’.

Mis-en-scene of images:Opposite is my magazine front cover, and next to it is a copy of ‘Kerrang!’. I used this cover to style my own around it, as I thought that this might cause buyers to relate to my new magazine and buy it. I used one main image in the centre to grab attention, similar to ‘Kerrang!’ and I then used three more smaller images along the bottom of my cover as too again be similar to ‘Kerrang!’. I thought I managed this quite well, especially seen as I managed to cut out a ‘singer’ to look similar.

Costumes and props:

I noticed during my research that in double page spreads, the images used were not plain, but bright and engaging. I took this on board when it came to taking my pictures for my magazine. I chose to take my pictures on an unused bridge in a woods, which was riddled with graffiti. I thought it worked because it matched my audience, as it was edgy and cool.

People:

I noticed that everyone on the front cover of music magazines usually had the same kind of ‘cool’ look to them. There was no cheesy smiles, or thumbs up, everyone looked quite serious. I tried to re-create this in my own image, and I also added pink lipstick to attract attention to the picture as the front cover usually had an eye-catching feature, for example, smoke, a microphone etc.

The title of the magazine:

Above is my magazine font and a magazine that shares the same genre of music and same style of audience as me, ‘KERRANG!’s font.

I decided that using a ‘style model’ would be the best thing when creating my magazine, and so I aimed to make my font look similar to the already existing music magazines out there. I chose the font ‘28 days later’ from dafont.com. I think I achieved this as my title looks pretty similar to that of renown magazine: ‘Kerrang!’. I chose to keep my font black and my background white as Kerrang! has this style too.

Written Content:

I styled my written content around a style model. I broke the text up with images and also quotes, to make it more interesting to look at and to read. The text itself is mainly questions and answers about the singers music, life, romantic life etc. I did this because after looking over some interviews I found that this was what was mainly included.

Music genre and how your magazine suggests it:The genre of my music magazine is rock/indie. I think this is represented well but firstly the models I have chosen to use. They all have a sense of indie/rock by either their general ‘cool’ look, or their props. I haven't used tanned girls with bright blonde hair wearing pink dresses and smiling, because this wouldn’t fit. Instead I used boys and girls wearing clothes typical to the genre of my magazine, looking either serious or laughing in a casual way.

Another way I have made my magazine suggest that it is from the rock/indie genre is by listing the names of bands and artists that are typical to the genre on both the front page and the contents page. This is an immediate giveaway that my magazine is from the rock/indie genre as people will be able to form a link between my magazine and the bands.

Layout:The general layout of my magazine front cover is the same as one that I found of music magazine ‘Kerrang!’. After research was conducted, I found out that magazines that have the same kind of style would sell more than a re-developed ‘new’ style magazine. This is because the audience can associate with the magazine I produced and buy it, rather than be wary of a new magazine and not buy it.

I made my magazine similar to my style model in lots of different ways. The first was creating my title and the bar above it. I used the same font, and also used a competition, similar to the style model, to try and catch peoples opinions. Then I used a photo in the centre to capture attention, and three smaller images below as to make the page look busier. I included a ‘free poster giveaway’ similar to my style model to also try and capture readers attention and buyers. Also, I included a ‘PLUS!’ section towards the bottom of my page so that my magazine looked like it had lots of things going on inside, because I didn’t want to make it look empty, I wanted lots to be going on, again, to be like my style model.

Contents page:I was very happy with the results of my contents page. I think I managed to achieve a similar standard, including an organized band index is alphabetical order, a main image, a column on the right hand side of the page including a list of features and an advertisement to name just a few. I don’t think I could have done this page any better, as it looks similar to my style model: a music magazine contents page. I also made sure the colours from my front cover ran into the contents page so that they link and look like they are from the same publication.