1. 1.In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and
conventions of real media products?
When producing my music magazine I used many conventions that are regularly used in music
magazines, however I also challenged some forms of these conventions making them into my own
ideas. The title of my music magazine is called ‘mixtape’ and this relates to most artists all over the
world who would release a mixtape which are free to get there music out into the world so people
could listen to them. This follows most music magazine names which all relate to music in one way
or another and give a reader an idea of what music genres going to be in the magazine. I have used
simple colour schemes which are a convention of real media products to not over complicate and
make pages hard to read and look tacky and fake. My colour scheme is red, black and white whilst
using different shades of black it still looks clear and realistic. My media product uses the
conventions of layout and I have used the rule of thirds and Guttenberg principle to correctly
position my main image making sure it’s clear and on the rule of thirds. I used the Guttenberg
principle to layout my front cover so readers could easily read my work. The layout is based around
the Mixmag magazine design. My photography follows conventions because when taking my photos
I made sure my main image on the cover was giving a direct mode of address and this is typical for
magazines like Q and Mixmag. The mise en scene on my contents page images and double page
spread images show a music studio and I used this background to make the images look more
realistic and the artists in my magazine look like artists. The front cover image doesn’t have a
background and this is typical for a magazine to have a plain background. On my images I
manipulated I changed the colour of the image making it black and white on the contents page I also
cut background of the image as this was wasting space on the magazine.
On my written article I followed the conventions of an article. I set the article out in columns
and made the masthead spread across the page. The tone used in my written article is informal and
laid back due to it being an interview with a young artist. There is also slang used as it was an
interview I wanted to make it as real as possible. I added a kicker to explain to the reader who they
were as they were a new up and coming artist who was unknown around the music world. I laid my
columns out so the first page was all writing then on the other side I added a small amount of text
and a large image of the two boys. My double page spread follows many of the conventions of a real
double page spread and I haven’t really challenged any conventions on this page.