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

By Robyn Clemans

My Front Cover

The name of my magazine follows conventions of real music magazines as I have chosen to create a rock magazine, the

name of my magazine is ‘metal beats’ the word metal relates to the genre of music my magazine is based on and the word beats is related to music. The font used for the name metal

beats also follows conventions for a rock magazine as the font is informal and therefore attracts the young target audience; the colour used also follows conventions as I have used red

which usually represents danger which is related to rock music

My Front Cover I took my influence for the font and colour of the magazine name from the existing magazine Kerrang. My

front cover challenges usual conventions of a rock magazine as

the image used is of a young girl with blonde hair. The usual convention for a rock magazine would be a man or maybe a male band who look scary, however the female model I have

used is wearing a leather jacket with a striped shirt and heavy black eye makeup and therefore does follow

the convention of a rock artist.

My Front Cover For the front cover I used two Q magazine covers

and one vibe magazine cover, from the three I used each one used the same house style of red

black and white which is where the influence came from for my own house style on the front cover. I think I have been successful in following

conventions for a rock magazine for my front cover as the house style matches and the fonts

used are informal.

My Front Cover

The influence of the style of my front cover came from the image below of an existing

NME cover, I have used a similar layout with the cover lines and similar spacing.

Contents Page

The contents page I have created is a similar style to the front cover as both use the same house style. The

name of the magazine is the same and the title ‘contents’ uses an informal font in a similar way to the

masthead and also uses the colours black and red which follows conventions of a rock magazine as black and red usually represent something dark and scary.

Contents Page

The fonts used for the list of pages on

the contents are more formal, this

follows conventions of magazines as its

important information that

needs to be easy to read and not in an

informal font.

Contents Page

The image used on the contents page does follow usual conventions for a rock magazine as it’s a male model who is dressed in an indie fashion which follows conventions of a

male rock artist I have also used another image of the female model and she is dressed like a rock artist and therefore this

follows conventions. However with the contents page image I think I could have been more successful following conventions of a male rock artist by using someone who looked a bit scarier

and wasn’t smiling on the image as this doesn’t represent a rock artist very well.

Double Page SpreadThe double page spread I have created for my magazine follows the same house style as the rest of the magazine and therefore follows the

usual conventions for a rock magazine. The double page spread follows conventions in the layout as one full side is filled with an image of the artist and the other side includes the article

with a pull quote which is usual for a double page spread article. The image I have used on the double page spread follows conventions as it’s a large image of the artist who has a direct mode of address which entices the reader. The article itself follows conventions also as it’s a

live interview where the interviewer’s speech is in a red font and the artists is in black.