The document summarizes the ways in which the student's music magazine product uses and develops conventions of real music magazines. It discusses how the student was inspired by magazines like Rolling Stone, NME, and Vibe for the magazine's masthead design, layout, and photography. The student researched popular magazine designs and applied conventions like consistent house style, color schemes, font styles, photo positioning, and column layout to articles. All images were edited and enhanced to look professionally published in the magazine.

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

2. My Magazine
The music magazine I have produced has been inspired by a range of
different music magazines which has helped when designing my
product. The title of my magazine is Rock’n’Roll. This masthead was
designed on Photoshop which has enabled me to give it a professional
look. It is displayed in red font which represents the genre that my
magazine is targeted towards; this being both men and women aging
from 15-25. The representation of the colour portrayed in the masthead is
youth rebellion which is common in magazines such as NME and VIBE.
My masthead was inspired from magazines such as Rolling Stone for the
colour and NME for the block capital letters. My masthead is developed
from both of these magazine mastheads in the way they the shape of
the text and the shade of the red is different in the way I liked it to look.

3. Research
Before making my product I researched different magazines to identify the house
style used and to see how well other magazines had used the Guttenberg design
principle. This then inspired me to make my magazines house style consistent as
does ‘Q’ magazine and the NME. I thought this consistency of the pages made
my magazine look professional and made the pages flow nicely. Whilst
researching magazine pages I discovered that all magazines varied when using
the Guttenberg design principle depending on what the design of the page was.
When designing my magazine I followed the Guttenberg design principle that
was used on a VIBE magazine I liked. My cover didn’t entirely reflect the VIBE
magazine as I designed it how I thought looked best. The house style and colour
scheme of my magazine was determined by a survey I undertook which gave
me the results of my target audience and what colour scheme they would like to
see in a new music magazine. This colour scheme is consistent throughout the
page which I have produced which keeps the professionalism of the magazine.
The font styles and sizes I have used were similar to ones used on ‘Q’ and ‘VIBE’
magazines as I they reflected the target audience well in the way they were
designed and I thought they were suitable for my magazine.

4. My Photography
All the images displayed in my magazine have been photographed by
myself with the help of some friends who modelled for me. The front cover
photograph was inspired by many different magazines including ‘Q’ ‘NME’
‘VIBE’ and ‘Rolling Stone’ as they all at some point have used a full length
shot of a model for a magazine cover. I thought a photograph taken in this
way would work well on one of the first issues of a new music magazine as
the audience are familiar to covers with models looking this way which
would make them more likely to buy the product. The photograph used for
the front cover of my magazine is slightly off centre into the primary optical
zone. This applies with the Guttenberg design principle and keeps the
professional look of the magazine. The model is looking at the camera which
gives direct address to the audience which could in turn make them want to
purchase the product. Likewise the photograph used on my double page
spread has been positioned mainly on the right hand side of the pages and
goes onto the left page slightly. I thought this looked like professional music
magazine such as a ‘VIBE’ double page spread.

5. Enhancing images
and text
All images used in my magazine have been edited to
enhance and manipulate the colour and skin tone of the
models to make them look more vibrant and bring out the
colours in their clothes and props used. All edges of images
used have been smoothed and taken away form the
original background to make them look the best they
could on my magazine. The article displayed in my double
page spread has been constructed in a traditional way of
being split into three equal sized columns across the left
page. This has been done to fit around the image and is a
traditional way magazines display text. This can be seen
throughout all magazines including ‘VIBE’ and ‘NME’.