The document discusses how a student magazine project uses conventions from real music magazines to make their magazine realistic. Key conventions included are: - Using a masthead, cover image, headlines and tagline on the front cover similar to magazines like NME and Kerrang. - Choosing a magazine title ("Inferno") that indicates the genre (gossip and news) in the way titles of music magazines indicate their genre. - Laying out the contents page and sections like the table of contents in NME, with the main story centralized and artist index. - Featuring artists from the indie/rock genre on the cover and in stories, as NME only features that genre of music

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

2. Introduction.
 Within my magazine I have used certain
conventions to make my magazine as realistic as
possible. To start with, I have used the basics for
my front cover. Firstly, I have used a mast head
predominately located at the top center of the
page, bold and big in black. I have used a cove
image of a teenage girl, representing the type of
target audience who would buy the magazine.
Also included is the main headline, noticeable
bigger to emphasise the importance of the head
story, and also smaller headlines covering the
issues in the magazine. Other techniques used
are annotated next.

3. Mast
Head
Puff
Date and
issue
number
Tag line
Main Image
Smaller
head
lines
Main head
line
Barcode
Banner

4. The title of my magazine
 The title of a magazine is significant to indicate
what type of magazine it is and what kind of
genre it will be about. For example the title
‘Kerrang!’ first indicates that this is an electric
guitars strum, and so readers can firstly analyse
that this is a heavy music magazine, perhaps
rock. My magazine, named ‘Inferno’ indicates
warmth and fire, and so readers can discover my
magazine is hot for news and gossip, and very
open and straight forward to news.

5. Mise-en-sense of images.
 For the front cover I have used a plain white
background so the cover girl stands out. The use
of her being pale and in fresh, new colours can
reflect to the story of her come back and
becoming a better fresher person. She is also
smiling and looking natural, so quite simply she is
looking in a natural state and that the issue is on
a happy, positive story, and therefore an
audience will be reluctant to see her life
changed and what her successes are.

6. Font
 Taking a look at Kerrang! (A rock magazine) and
NME (An indie-rock magazine) and basing my
magazine around these musical genres, I took
into consideration how their fonts are bold and
outstanding in dark colours, commonly black,
white and/or red, and so therefore I took this into
consideration and styled my title in a bold black
and big thick letters.

7. Written content
 The front covers written content is usually kept to
a minimal so that the audience are draw to and
concentrating to the image and main story line.
The less the text, the more neater the page also
can look and it looks a lot less clustered and
busy. I have also adopted to many music
magazine conventional features by putting some
text in a banner and a puff to stand out the key
stories, especially some of the shocking storys
inside.

8. Musical genre
 The musical genre is evident on every NME cover.
This is because it sticks to all stories within the
same musical genre: indie-rock. The main image
and cover line, and separate smaller headlines
all link to an indie-rock artist or story. From this, I
attempted to do similar by using artists such as
Jake Bugg and Beady Eye who are both
indie/rock artists to be featured on my indie/rock
magazine.

9. Here this is evident:
All
familiar
indie/ro
ck artists

10. Contents
 I based my contents page around an NME
contents as I liked the layout and detail. I liked
the ideas of:
 The title/layout the the contents page
 The contents lay out sections
 The way the main story was central with an
image
 The artist index
 The ‘subscribe now’ box

12. Contents
 The contents basically explains what is included
in the issue so therefore it was important to
include indie/rock artists names, the main ocver
girl and her image, and also the page number to
each story.
 The contents has to be clear as easily to follow
for the reader to easily navigate themselves
around the magazine. Therefore I still stuck to my
colour scheme from the cover page of
black, white, red and yellow and it makes the
text clear and easy to read.

13. Overall
 Looking at my front cover, contents and double
page spread, I think that my magazine successfully
use conventions of real media products, such as
real music magazines with similar music genres. I
feel like my conventions developed the
conventions seeing as I based my magazine
conventions from NME and Kerrang! Issues but
broadened the effects by changing the font, style
and sizes to make them more effective and for
them to stand out better with also different colour
schemes. This challenged my conventions to see if
they could also be successful, however from looking
at my finished product, I feel like my magazine
looked really good with its realistic conventions,
layouts and forms.