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

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

2. My Magazine
“Drop” magazine is a magazine dedicated to electro-house and
death-electro music, however it leads quite a dark and perhaps
punk-ish approach. I personally could not find any magazines that
were produced in a similar fashion, and thus thought that there was
room in the magazine market for what I was offering. I think that
my magazine does have a relatively niche audience, but I do believe
that its readership is made up of quite a range of different types of
people; there’s something there for people who like electronic
music, for people who are into quite grungy, dark genres in general
and even for people who just like to read about the newest music
gossip. When I compared my magazine to that of other electronic
magazines, I noticed that they used serifs that were possibly
slightly more generic and straight to the point, whereas I used a
much more striking and intriguing font to entice my readership.

3. Font And Colour
My magazine, “Drop”, uses a separate font on
the masthead, titles and contents page numbers
in order to connote importance; they particularly
convey themselves to the reader. The font itself
is quite shocking and sharp and from my
research into my target audience, this is what
they wanted to see. My research into other
magazines that are similar to this genre also led
me to believe that using such a striking font on
the more important pieces of text would
immediately entice the reader. I used the colour
white for the text on my front cover as it gave
connotations of being quite slick but also being
very different to other magazines that normally
rely on a white background with different
coloured font. I purposely used a black
background with white font to convey these
ideas of being different and perhaps outcast-ish
as I wanted that to be the message that was put
across to my audience; that it is ok to be
different.

4. How I Challenged Conventions
I challenged the typical conventions of an electronic music magazine by
making it slightly more grungy than normal. I made it much darker and
had a relatively promiscuous looking model on the front cover as well as
surrounding her with articles regarding “exposure” and “death”.
I did this as I wanted it to appeal to a slightly different, if
larger, audience than a generic electronic music magazine does, and I
wanted it to have a different readership. I particularly wanted my
readership to be slightly darker, perhaps gothic, and did this by
incorporating the sub-genre “death-electro” into my magazine. The
connotations of this are quite different to that of a normal electronic
music magazine and this genre is often seen as being much heavier and
much more edgy. I tried to show this on my cover using lots of black
and white as opposed to the traditional bright colours used on an
electronic magazine.

5. How I Used Conventions
I used typical conventions in an
electronic music magazine by following
the general format of their front cover.
This appeared to be having a main
picture taking up the majority of the
space and have it surrounded by
articles, stories and news regarding
particular topics that are of interest to
the average reader of the magazine.
These would include upcoming
tours, interviews with new and old acts
and perhaps gossip on a well known
group. I managed to incorporate all of
these features into my front cover, thus
following the general conventions of an
electronic music magazine. I also
followed the conventions of an
electronic music magazine by setting
out my contents page in two columns
and using quite a colloquial lexis in
order to engage with the reader. I used
first particular pronouns such as “you”
and “we” in order to make the reader
feel like I was talking straight to them
and as thought they were special.