1. 1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real
media products?
After looking extensively at the variation in genre conventions of mainstream pop magazines such as
RollingStone, Billboard and Q Magazine I picked several elements to expand on for inspiration for the overall
look of my magazine. Firstly, I used a serif font for my coverlines to conform to the conventions of typography
during the time period my magazine takes inspiration from which is the 1950s. However this challenges
modern mainstream pop magazines such as Billboard who typically uses serif fonts consistently to appeal to
their mass audience; but will create a unique look against the popular magazine market. The masthead on my
cover also challenges typical real media conventions as I use two separate font styles to create a vivid logo as
well as using a low filled orange photo screen overlay on the text to create a soft tone to both colours and give
it a retro look. This will stand out against standard magazine logos that use only one colour for the
masthead.For my contents page I tried to imitate the layout of Billboard magazine by using some negative
space between the image and text to give a clean and precise finish to the edge of the image. By also using one
image that has been cropped using the polygon tool I challenge typical magazine conventions as the contents
is not overcrowded with framed photos and bold text; allowing the house style to be simple and stylish to
appeal to my female audience. I developed my contents title further by adopting a heart shape and
implementing a light to dark gradient overlay on the hot pink colour to give a 3D effect. I decided not to
visually implement a clear divide in the double page spread, such as a photo or shape division, as I felt that this
restricts to spacing of the article text and the amount of images allowed on a page. Therefore, I resized several
images using the grid across the top third of the page to balance to page and allow more images to convey the
context of my article further. Although I did use several shape divisions in the form of three lines which would
then tie in with my American theme of the page to give a clean cut it did not look unprofessional. It was
important that I investigated the conventions of other magazines types of the same genre so I could be able to
imitate similar layouts but adapt it so that it had a unique selling point in comparison to other generic
magazines, such as Billboard.