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

• It is important to use some conventions when creating my magazine to keep in pattern with what audiences recognise music magazines to be. By following the stereotypes adheres to what audiences expect and may like which would appeal more to the target audience.

• My media product both challenges and uses conventions of the real media product - one way that it challenges the real media product is that all female artists are used in my magazine - this is different to the normal convention of acoustic guitar being more of a male orientated niche genre with the stereotype of older men being conveyed on the cover of the magazine. The magazine shown is a key example of how my chosen niche genre is mostly male dominated - by choosing younger female artists I challenged this convention.

• Another way my magazine challenges conventions is that I used famous artists who crossed over into the pop genre so my magazine was not completely acoustic guitar e.g. on my front cover I featured artists such as George Ezra, James Arthur and Passenger who have been in the charts and can be seen as more pop artists.

• This crossover would appeal to a wider target audience and would mean my magazine is not as niche as if it was completely acoustic guitar. I did not want my magazine to be just aimed at those who are acoustic guitar fans but rather a wider audience which would increase sales and readership. In my target research 60% of participants said my magazine was acoustic guitar genre but 40% believed it was something else suggesting I have not created my magazine to a niche genre but have left it reflect a variety of genres.

• I took inspiration from another acoustic guitar magazine and used key components from the magazine to incorporate into my own to ensure that I was following the typical conventions

I took inspiration from the Ed Sheeran cover and chose to incorporate some aspects such as the horizontal angled coloured band going across the front cover. It was eye catching to me when I first saw the Acoustic cover so felt it would have the same impact for my target audience. I used the colour red throughout my front cover as it contrasts between the white aspects of the models t-shirt and masthead and also stands out against the green aspects such as the leaves of the background image.

I originally had the colour palette as a light purple lilac colour but after consideration I felt that a less gendered colour would suit my magazine better and appeal to a wider target audience. I found that a lot of magazines I looked at used very neutral colours such as orange and red.

My masthead sits behind the main image which is a main convention of music magazines - letters of magazines such as on magazine such as Acoustic and Kerrang. It shows that the magazine is very well known and even with letters covers the masthead is instantly recognised by audiences due to brand identity of the typography used. I did not completely cover my masthead but I small portion of the ‘O’ is covered by my models sunglasses in the main image.

My coverlines also use the conventions - my coverlines are displayed either side of my media product. I have more/bigger articles displayed on the right as readers would read from left to right so would have their attention drawn to the right. I incorporated my colour palette into the coverlines to create a brand identity.