QUESTION 1

By Amy Stewart

In what ways does your

media product use, develop

or challenge forms and

conventions of real media

products?

USE

What forms and conventions have I followed in

my Magazine?

COVER

On my front cover I have followed the convention of

having a masthead. It is placed at the top of the page it is

called stereo. It is in a dark red colour and really stands

out.

I have one main image as the background of my

magazine. I have really tried to make my image of my

cover star Shan.G to stand out, I have changed the

colours of Shan around so that she seems more quirky and

stands out, I have also used props to make it conform to

my theme a bit more.

I have not included any cover lines on my front cover because I wanted to do an unconventional magazine so after doing some research I found that most of them did not have cover lines they would just have one word or a quote. I chose to do a quote saying “music is my life”.

The layout of my magazine is quite conventional because my masthead is at the top of the page, my barcode is at the bottom in the left hand corner and my picture is in the middle of the page but for my quote I have rotated it and have put it over part of my picture and normally magazines would try to put them round the sides of the image.

The fonts I have used on my front cover are different. For my masthead I have used a font called eurostille, My quote font is called a hundred miles. I wanted to use different fonts because I am doing an unconventional magazine and with my quote I wanted it in more of a handwriting font to make it more unusual.

CONTENTS

My contents page follows conventions, as it has sub-

headings which divide my magazine into certain areas for

example, I have: features, music and artists.

I have a masthead at the top left hand corner of my cover

which is the same colour and font as my front cover so I

have made sure I am keeping the colour scheme the same

throughout my magazine.

I also have a image of my cover star Shan.G as my

background but it is faded so it looks a bit different to the

other contents pages.

ARTICLE

In my article I have used some conventions. I have used a picture of

my cover star in the article as it is about her life.

I decided to do an interview about Shan’s life and I think it has

worked out well

I wanted to make it slightly different so I have my image in the

middle of the double page and have text wrapped my text around it,

which I really like the unique and quirky effect it made.

I have also, used the same colour scheme dark red as I have in my

cover and contents.

DEVELOP

What conventions or layout ideas have you seen elsewhere and

developed your style?

FRONT COVER

In the begging my front cover looked very different but it wasn’t really

working, so I changed my ideas and it turned out very different.

I looked at some magazines that were not really conventional and I really

liked them. I liked them because they were very minimal but striking at

the same time and I wanted to do something similar.

The magazines I looked at were called INDIE, PAPER and LULA.

I loved how unconventional they were and I tried to do that with my

magazine as I had one picture which had effects on and used props such

as a camera and flowers and then I also only have mu masthead and a

quote.

CONTENTS

For my contents page I looked at some contents pages that

were a bit different and I wanted to take some ideas form

them and then make them my own. My idea for my contents

page came from myself as I had the idea of having my

picture as the background but faded it out to make it relate

to my INDIE theme more.

I wanted to keep it simple like my front cover so that it

was still an unconventional magazine inside.

ARTICLE

For my article I looked at some of the Q magazine articles so I

wanted to take some of their ideas and adapt them to my own. But

because I am doing an unconventional magazine I wanted to make it

slightly different to other magazine articles.

I looked at the Lady GaGa article in Q magazine and I really liked

it but wanted it to be a lot more unconventional than it was It was

really hard to find quite an unconventional article. Some of the

things I did were that I have my image in the middle of the page and

text wrapped my text.

CHALLENGED

Have you deliberately broken a convention and

why did you do it?

FRONT COVER

I have challenged conventions on my front cover because the look of my front

cover is not the “typical” look of what people expect to see as a front cover of a

magazine .

My masthead STEREO is at the top of the page and then I have a image of my

cover star “Shan.G”. I think the things that make my magazine unconventional are

that I have tried to make my front cover really simple but quirky at the same time.

I wanted my magazine to be different to other magazines out there.

I have changed the colours of shannon’s picture to make it stand out more and

pop out of the page. Also, I have used a old fashioned camera as prop, which isn’t

typical but I think it added to the genre of INDIE and Shannon’s style. I have also

used a handwriting style quote which isn’t normally typical of a magazine either.

CONTENTS

My contents page is quite unconventional because

of my picture. Originally I had just my photo of

Shannon on my contents page but then I wanted to

try it as my background and to make it more indie I

wanted to change the way the photo looked.

I finally changed the colour of the image and then

faded it into the background so that it was a bit

different to other contents pages that I had seen.

ARTICLE

My article would be unconventional because my image of my

cover star Shan.G is in the middle of my double page spread, which

isn’t normally done because the picture will crease but I really like

the effect and I then have my text wrapping round the image.

Also, the image of Shannon is quite unconventional because one

of her eyes is being covered by an old fashioned camera and the

other eye has weird eye makeup around it which relates to

Shannon and her quirky style.