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

Conventions is a widely recognised way of doing something, it’s to do with the content style and form. For example most music magazines have a memorable title which can be easily seen making clear the title of the magazine. Most of the time there is one large main image showing a band or singer, they usually make eye contact to make the audience feel more involved. This is what the main article in the magazine is likely to be about. The contents page will usually have the title ‘contents’, hotspots, quotes and eye catching colours. Magazine conventions don’t exist because people want magazines to all look the same, it is just a basic outline, conventions don’t have to be followed but they usually are as people are used to them. Some magazines are more conventional than others depending on the subject matter and the audience.

The genre of my magazine is rock/metal. I did this because it’s the type of music I would listen to and so I know what the target audience would want. I took influence from magazines such as Kerrang! and Metal Hammer. As you can see from the pictures below my magazine is quite similar in terms of its conventions. The header of my magazine stands out from its background and I have one main image where the person is staring directly into the camera. Metal Hammer had gone against conventions by only including one image on their front page and not much text apart from along the top of the page, which Kerrang! and myself have also done, making it obvious this is a media convention.