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

A convention is something which sticks to the norm of the genre/stereotype/product etc. An example of a convention would be putting your socks on before your shoes. You could put socks on after your shoes, but you might not look right.

For this part of the course, I have created a punk/rock music magazine. I have selected magazines such as “Kerrang” and “NME” to influence my design.

NME Front Cover.

Kerrang Front Cover.

Some of the more obvious conventions of a magazine cover would be the title (masthead), the large image behind all of the text (usually one large image, sometimes with smaller images layered on top), the date/issue line, a bar code, and any other cover lines. I have stuck to these conventions, aiming my magazine at a specific target audience (instantly creating a larger amount of viewers) rather than aiming my magazine at a completely new target audience (meaning not as many people would see it/read it). My design ended up being quite simple, with only three main colours used (red, black and white). This was inspired by NME since these are the main colours of their magazine. I have stuck to the conventions using only three main colours for my magazine, since most magazines don't use over 3/4 colours on the front cover of their magazine (since this would overwhelm the viewer and put them off reading it).