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

2. My masthead conformed to the normal expectations of a
magazine as it is stretched along the top of the front cover and is
still visible to read even though the artist’s head covers it slightly.
This was a usual convention for R&B magazines. The masthead
stands out as the ‘P’ and the ‘O’ are filled in with bright, vibrant
colours. (The use of the yellow made it stand out as it was not
part of my colour scheme, I took the idea from ‘Billboard’
magazine- this is why I think my masthead stands out from
others). The masthead is the largest piece of font on my cover as
it is the main feature and I wanted it to dominate the page. From
my initial questionnaire stated that the masthead is one of the
main things that my audience will look at first. I positioned my
masthead across the cover to make it easier to read which made
it more eye-catching. I placed the subheading above the
masthead from looking at real music magazines it followed
conventions and what I thought worked well with it.
When choosing the name of my magazine I went
with ‘UPTOWN’ as the name reminded me of
‘MOTOWN’; so when the audience looks at the
masthead there may an association with old
skool music. The reason why I made the
subheading above the masthead instead of
beneath it is that so there was an introduction to
the magazine and the reader would know exactly
what to expect inside.
I tried to keep the font quite simple so it would
be easy for my audience to read. All the text is
black and the theme runs throughtout the entire
magazine.

3. The masthead colours ran through my magazine and I kept it consistent so there
would be a clear link between the three. Also I only incorporated the colours to
features that I wanted to stand out on each three pages (i.e. the editor’s note on
the contents page). So for the front cover I used it on my masthead, the
contents page masthead and the quoteline on the double page spread. I kept
using the masthead on all three pages to inter-link them.

4. I only wanted to use 1 image on my front cover as it
was the main focus, so when the audience looked on
the double page spread they would instantly recognise
the artist. From R&B magazines I saw that they don’t usually have more than 1 image on the cover
so I decided to follow the convention; if I didn’t follow the convention I felt like the genre may have
been misinterpreted.
I wanted the image to be simplistic and minimalistic to reflect the innocence of the artist. The
mise-en-scene matched the colour scheme (blues dress and pink lips). I wanted the simplicity of
the image to balance out the text, I felt that if the image was very dramatic it would overpower
the front cover and make it look dysfunctional.
I thought that the use of 1 image
made my front cover have a
aspect of simplicity and the colour
used appealed to my audience as
bright colours usually appeal to
younger people but the off-the
shoulder made it a little more
‘grown up’ an appeal to the older
audience (24 year olds).

5. I wanted my artist’s outfit to be bright , the blue colour used would
stand out from the black text behind out. To do this I enhanced the
image I made the model appear lighted and the dress darker and
more vibrant to do this I used the exposure levels. This made it look
mo0re professional and made her look less ‘murky’. This is why I
think it conforms to conventions.
Brightening the image made it stand out from the background and
also the bright blue from the dress matched the colour scheme.

6. To conform to conventions I used models of both sexes and of a similar age to make it appeal to
my target audience. I also used the same technique when choosing the features, I chose the
artists from the questionnaires and what artists seemed to come up the most, I chose a variety of
different male and female artists.
I tried to make the features fairly unisex (i.e.) the fashion feature ‘26 rules for summer’ which
would appeal to the male and female audience.
Use of
different sex

7. The text (consisting of subheadings and smaller features) I think conforms to
expectations of magazines.
I used pullquotes and teasers as other magazines would to make the audience
more intrigued about what would be inside my magazine. For the pullquote to
stand out I used a different font and made the size bigger compared to other
features.
On certain features there
was more emphasis on the
things that I wanted to
make stand out such as, the
artist name, matshead and
quoteline.

8. For my double page spread I feel like I followed conventions up to a certain point. Most double page spreads have only 1
image where as I have 2. on most magazines I found that either the quoteline or the artist name was big but, never both;
to try and follow conventions I placed a quote near the smaller image; this is where I felt like I went against conventions.
However, I think that the eye is still able to follow the layout but the quoteline may seem out of place. I followed the
convention to keeping the artist image quite large. Another convention I went against is the size of the page number; I
wanted to keep the page numbers quite big so that there would be a running theme through my magazine. I made all the
numbers large on my front cover and contents page to make a statement and make it more visible to the reader;
whereas, on other magazines it is smaller.