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

2. Colour
• I designed a front cover, contents page and a double
page spread for a music magazine. The genre for my
music magazine is R&B and Rap. In my research of
existing R&B magazine such as VIBE, I found out that
they all consist of darker colours in comparison to
pop music magazines. To make my magazine seem
much more professional, I also followed this pattern.
I used a gradient background, which fades from black
to dark blue on my front cover. Using blue as my
background, suggests that I am targeting young men,
as the colour blue is stereotypically associated with
males

3. Image
• Commonly the image of the artist was over the
masthead, which gave the impression that the
magazine is confident in not showing the full name, as
people will be aware of it. Furthermore a benefit of
this is that, the image of the celebrity is enlarged so it
attracts viewers. The image of the artist normally
expresses that they have attitude and confidence
within themselves. I also followed this pattern; I used
a medium close up shot of someone’s face looking
straight at the camera. I placed this image over my
masthead ‘remix’ which gives the impression that my
magazine is confident in its brand. Furthermore the
artist on my magazine seems like he has attitude,
which is a positive thing for a music magazine.

4. General conventions
• General conventions such as the
barcode cover lines, and
straplines were all used on my
front cover to make it seem
more professional. The main
cover line on existing music
magazines were generally the
largest in size compared to the
other cover lines, I also followed
the pattern. My main cover line
was ‘top of his game’ and this
was the largest text on the page
after the masthead.

5. Colour
• The double page spread contains a dark
background which is mostly black but the
top left of it is slightly dark grey. Having
this as a background already challenges
the existing double page spreads that I
researched as they all had a white
background with black text; this made the
test stand out on the page as black and
white are totally contrasting colours.
However, since I was going with the dark
colour scheme, I felt it would have been a
good idea to make my double page dark
too. This makes it seem like that the
double page spread belongs to the
magazine’s front cover.

6. Text
• The text was white so it stood out on the page, and
made it easier to read. By doing this I wanted to
appeal to my target audience which are young
men, they stereotypically will be associated with
darker colours such as black. However, one
convention that I did use was that I included a
quote on my double page spread. By doing this I
wanted to achieve professionalism in my DPS, and I
felt that I did achieve it.

7. • One side of each double page spread that I
researched was just an image of the artist and
the other side was full of text. I followed this
pattern, and placed a medium shot of someone
sitting down on a chair on the right side and text
to go with it on the left side. This made both the
pages more organised and easy to understand as
there was only one images and text of the left
dedicated to it. I adapted this pattern, so that
my DPS can relate to these existing double page
spreads. Seeing this layout, my audience would
already be able to relate it to existing
professional DPSs.

8. Image
• The contents pages I researched
consisted of just one image (which was
generally a medium shot) of an artist
looking straight at the camera
expressing their confidence. I took a
medium shot someone standing,
wearing sun glasses. The sunglasses
express his confidence and make him
look cooler which is a positive thing for
my music magazine. I followed this
convention of a content page, as it
would contribute to the professionalism
in my contents page.

9. Conventions
• I kept same colour scheme with my contents page too. I
made the image of the artist black and white with the
background being black and white too. This can relate
to my front cover and double page spread as they also
consist of darker colours. Not many of the existing
contents pages did this, so I challenged his convention.
By doing this I was hoping to achieve my audience’s
attention by making it unique and not like other
contents pages out there. To make my contents page
seem professional, like existing contents pages I wrote
out the heading of the page and developed it a little
right under it. This gives the reader a little more
information on what is on that particular.