In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge

forms and conventions of real media products?

My media products use conventions of real media products by their use of all the generic conventions you would except to see on a music magazine front cover, contents page and a double-page spread. It includes a bar code, a masthead, a tag line and magazine branding. The reason I included all of these was to ensure my magazine looked as realistic as possible. Also, the text would be read left to right which is how people read in general. The colour scheme has three different colours throughout which is the correct amount of colours a magazine generally has to avoid it looking too busy and loud. The colours I chose I feminine and therefore appeal to females rather than males (which was the target audience), magazines always appeal to a specific gender and age and my magazine was based for teenage girls which I think is shown throughout. I used ‘Top of The Pops’ magazine for inspiration for my magazine which is also based on teenage girls who like pop music. The image I’ve used is conventional for a pop/r’n’b star because they are posing with a moody, ‘I don’t care’ attitude which many pop stars portray, the model is looking the camera in the lens which is expected on a font cover as it’s to engage readers. In the contents page I used a screenshot image of the front cover and other photos of celebrities that would be featured inside, this is conventional of what a music magazine does. The images used in the double-page spread are fun and entertaining images which is generic for a pop music magazine to have some sort of element of silliness and fun. The pink background on my double-page spread represents how that particular article would appeal to females more which is also conventional, as pink is stereotypically a female colour. Whereas, if I used blue it would look like it’s aimed for males. On every page I created I used branding which is to advertise to readers this is typical of a music magazine as they do all they can to promote it, the branding logo is old school pop and stands out due to the font being so thick and similar to bubble writing. The font is quite funky and curved on the front cover as well all with feminine colours causing it to look girly; this is the same throughout the contents page as well. On the double-page spread the model blending into the background causes the article to look quirky and stand out, as the writing goes around the image.

Furthermore, my magazine front cover uses text to represent the target audience, using the phrase “Harry Styles and I are best buds” instantly shows the target audience as young, as if it was aimed at adults a light-hearted pull-quote like that would not be used. The fact this particular pull-quote goes underneath the masthead represents it’s aimed for the teenage girl audience. Then “Pop Star UH-OH’s” also is a young phrase and is shown to be for teenage girls. Having text which bases around a certain age group is a conventional feature for a magazine. Then in the contents page, abbreviations are used such as “1D” to shorten the boy bands name “One Direction” which would not be spelt like that if aimed at an older group of people, then a stereotypical Essex word “reem” is used which is from the programme TOWIE (once again, a word only teenagers would use). Another generic convention I used was in the double-page spread the first letter in the article being bigger than all the others; this is something that has been being used in magazines for years. The slang throughout the article, including: “gotta”, “oooo” and “aww” are all phrases which are used regularly by teenagers and are words which I’ve seen used during interviews with pop stars beforehand. At the end of the interview it tells the reader that his new album is out for sale soon, which is publicity for the pop star. Conventionally, that is what happens at the end of an article with a pop star. My magazine also includes a tag line “Your Pop Fix” which is a generic convention as well and straight away tells a reader the music genre is pop.