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

Whilst creating my magazine, I understood that there were certain conventions and aspects of a magazine that I had to include in my magazine. To ensure that the aspects in my magazine reached my target audience, I did some research on other magazine covers and contents pages from magazines that my target audience would be interested in reading, such as 'teen vogue'. This research allowed me to get ideas about what I had to include in my magazine for it to reach my target audience.

 

The magazine conventions that I included in my magazine, include:

Title: For the masthead on my magazine, I used ‘Berlin Sans FB’. I used a mixture of blue, black and white colour fonts; I used these colours because they linked into the school colours the magazine was being made for. This meant that I could put the most important features on my magazine cover in the darker coloured fonts. Using Photoshop, I then manipulated the magazine title by stretching it across the page, to make it stand out compared to the rest of the page and because it was a title, it needed to go over the whole of the top of the page and stand out. The colours are formal and reflected the colours of the school.

Costumes and props:  All the costumes and magazines used throughout the magazine are conventional. The costumes and props are an important feature of the magazine, because it helps the audience to look into the image in more detail and also gives them more of an idea of what the magazine will be about. The costumes used in the images that I took for the front cover of my magazine was students in their school uniform. When taking the images, I had to ensure that the setting I used for the image was appropriate and it made the costumes and props stand out, more than it made the background of the image itself stand out.

People: The girl used on the front cover of the magazine, relates to the theme of the magazine, which is a magazine about a new sixth form. Therefore, I had to ensure that when taking my images, I used a sixth form pupil otherwise any other student wouldn’t relate to the magazine front cover and it would make the magazine front cover harder for the reader to understand. (photo of sixth form student-Beth Hayes)

 

Written Content: The written content of my magazine follows the codes and conventions of a real school magazine by covering similar topics in the questions (top 10 exam tips, uniform etc.) All of the topics in the magazine relate to the target audience of the magazine, which are teenagers, therefore, if what they are reading is aimed at them; it will be more appealing for them. In addition to this, the interview follows conventions by introducing one of the sixth form students at the start of the interview.

Barcode: I made a barcode which is placed in the bottom right hand corner of the magazine.

Layout: The layout of my magazine is conventional.

Colour scheme: I used the school colours on the front cover and the contents page of my magazine as this meant that they related to the images and didn’t stand out too much compared to the main image in the centre of the page. The main colours that I used on my magazine were black, dark blue and white.

Contents page: My contents page follows the conventions of any other magazine contents page. It includes a copy of the cover of the magazine, this means that if the reader was interested in something on the cover of the page, they will be able to find it inside the magazine. The layout of the photos and text on my contents page would appeal to my target audience.

Price: The magazine is free, which makes it more appealing and will make more people want to read it.

Front Cover

 



Contents Page