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

2. My magazine uses the forms and conventions of NME magazine. Similarly, the masthead of my magazine is in the top left hand corner of the page. Also it is bold and uses the colour red, which follows the conventions of NME magazine. I have done this because it is stands out from the cover lines and the colour makes it catch the readers attention. As well as this, both magazines include cover lines about artists featured inside the magazine. This may make readers inclined to buy the magazine if they know there are features of their favourite bands. Both magazines also have cover lines that tell the reader about free posters within them. These plugs may also attract readers to buy the magazine. There are also famous musicians on both covers of the magazines. It is important to feature artists that appeal to the target audience, because they are the people buying the magazine.

3. When designing my contents page, I also forms and conventions similar to NME magazine. For example, both contents pages have a light coloured background. This makes it easy for the audience to read. On my contents page I used the line ‘this week in Louder’, this is similar to NME, where it reads ‘Inside this week’. This feature makes it clear to the reader that it is a contents page. Both contents pages are spread out and clear for the reader. The reader may be put off reading the magazine if the contents page is too overloaded. For example the text boxes on my magazine are using a clear, bold font. Similarly NME uses a clear bold font. This helps make stories stand out from the page and catch the readers attention. I chose to include photographs in my contents page because they catch the eye of the reader. I found that when reading NME, the photographs used kept catching my eye which made me want to read the story.

4. I have also used the forms and conventions of NME magazine when designing my double page spread. Like NME, my double page included a large photograph of the artist. This makes it clear to the reader who the story is about. It is important to include a large picture because this is what the audience sees first. The picture used may decide whether the audience read the story or not. Also similar to NME, my headline is in a bold font with the colour contrasting the page. By doing this, the headline stands out from the page and attracts the attention of the readers, and gets them to read the story. The text for the main story is set out in columns, which gives my magazine a more professional look. I have also used a clear font. This makes it easy for the readers to read. If the font is unclear, the reader may be inclined to not read the story. This technique is common in many magazines such as NME magazine.