1. IN WHAT WAYS DOES YOUR MEDIA
PRODUCT USE, DEVELOP OR
CHALLENGE FORMS AND
CONVENTIONS OF REAL MEDIA
PRODUCTS?
Question 1
2. Media products
Each of these magazines feature a big and bold masthead that are a bigger size than any other font, this is a design that
occurs in many magazine products. They all have a house theme running through them, for example CLASH is very
monochrome and grey/black scale, there are no bright colours. This is persistent throughout the magazine, and is something I
wanted to include in my magazine design. The photos are all interesting, with either eye contact or close ups of the model on
the front cover. All magazines have a bar code, price and issue number. I think it is important to get the right price for your
magazine as I think it reflects the quality of your magazine. Many of the media products have features that is important to
include in your magazine design and I believe that I have included all the essential features and pushed the forms of
convention media products have developed.
4. Development
MASTHEAD- I kept the concept of using a square box with the magazine name placed in the box, filling the box. I think
by using a strong, confident colour and font, makes the masthead visually arresting, as it should be in a magazine
design as it is the corporate identity . Choosing to call my magazine BEAT was a difficult decision, as Q stands for
queue the music, I wanted to make it music related yet short and memorable. Choosing the font was just as difficult as
I had to conform with the sophisticated genre that the magazine had, yet appeal to my target audience, which was both
male and female, aged 18-25 years old. I did this by choosing a simple, bold font which stood out and caught peoples
attention, by adding ‘magazine’ underneath gave it the finished look and added detail to add to the design.
COVER STORY- ‘GIRLS ON THE EDGE’ is my cover story title. I came up with the name by thinking what made the
girl band sound interesting and modern, it needed to appeal to my target audience. ‘GIRLS ON THE EDGE’ is a
memorable band name, just like SPICE GIRLS, and by adding ‘on the edge’, the girl band will seem more fun and
exciting, like they are ‘living on the edge’. I decided to keep the title in the left hand bottom corner, the same as
Q, because I think it gives the front cover a order and style. It fitted in with my cover photo and I liked the way it lined
up with the masthead as well so I decided to keep this layout.
COVER PHOTO- I conformed to Q’s cover photo when deciding what positions to put my models in, I tried a range of
styles, however I decided that this works best with Q’s sophisticated style. I like the different levels of each band
member, and I tried to incorporate archetypes with a blonde, perhaps stereotypically dumb like baby spice and the
dark head acting as posh spice with the serious face and elegant clothing. I used plain, smart clothing as I think it adds
value and class to the magazine.
