Q1: In what ways does your music magazine use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real music magazines?

How does my magazine make use of regular media conventions? My Music Magazine "Resonator" makes a great use of magazine conventions, and does not deviate truly to any heavy extent away from them. I chose not to challenge the conventions simply because they are tried and trusted and it would make little practical sense to attempt to reinvent new ways in which to produce an effective magazine. Whilst there are minor aspects of my magazine that do not follow all conventions, basically everything around the design is based on previous magazine ideas. The colour scheme matches that which has already been fit to my music genre- predominantly red and white. This is the palette I used for my classic rock theme and is based on other magazines such as Q, NME and Rolling Stone, the main inspirations.

My magazine utilizes most if not all key conventions, such as the Z Formation of the front cover, as well as making use of other conventions that are shown in this word cloud to the right. These are the key conventions of a front cover, the aspects that are most prominent in all the most popular music magazines. I create my front cover with these in mind and essentially all of these conventions were used in order to make what I feel would be an effective front cover.

This is the front cover from Rolling Stone magazine. This acted to a degree to influence my own magazine, and there are aspects of it which I borrowed for my own front cover quite significantly. The most influential feature would be that of the font type I used- which is for the same the masthead for Rolling Stone. To prevent just plain copying this magazines style, I used this font, called "Royal Acid", for cover line text and minor text.

The colour scheme of this magazine cover also resembles that of my own, the red and white combination is one which is used frequently by many magazines of the same genre. In order to connote the feeling of a classic rock magazine, I felt that using colours such as Rolling Stone's would make it more identifiable by the audience.

My masthead is also similar in the way it is very important to the look of the page- just as here with Rolling Stone I used different effects on the masthead to make it stand out more and this in example of the hierarchy used when creating my text on the page. As well as this, my key cover line is similar in its style to that on Rolling Stone, although I did challenge to an extent conventions by using multiple colours on the cover which were done to show the American colours and appear more devastating and eye catching.

My cover lines are placed in a similar fashion to this front cover, which was done purposefully as I felt their positioning was key to making sure the primary lead article photo was most noticeable but they could also be read around the sides in keeping with the Z formation. Also my feature article was similar to that shown in this example, placed in the center with a white background, however challenging conventions to a small extent, I opted to add in an artistic background by having ink splatters to connote a sense of anarchy and reiterate the theme of the magazine to a degree.



This is my front cover annotated with all the key features listed on it.

Of course it is not just my front cover where I implemented the industry's conventions, naturally for the rest of my magazine key conventions are made use of and other influences also used to aid me.

Naturally the second page I worked on for the magazine was the contents page. I followed the same production steps as with my front cover, first gathering understanding of the key conventions of a contents page. These are listed to the left in this word cloud. I used the majority if not all of these conventions in my contents page, all to ensure that it would be as close to the real thing as possible. I used different magazines for inspiration, and did so with the intent of creating a contents page that any reader would be able to associate with the music genre based on these influences existence in the real world.

As you can see on the right, this is the contents page from a Q magazine. Q was one of my main influences, and this is very evident from the layout of the contents page. I heavily borrowed aspects of this contents page for my own, however sparing others purely for embedding my own originality in their place. I used the same grid structure that is used in this page, as well as having my main feature article photo in the right with the column based text to the left of it. I also made use of captions which is evident in this image, and my "Contents title" is in essentially the same place. Although this contents uses black, it essentially uses the similar red and white colour scheme of my own which was my house style that I maintained into the contents page from the front cover.

What this contents page does have that I lack is the magazine edition, the month is stated in the top right. Although I list this on the front cover as well as in the DPS, on reflection I would have added it on the top banner of my contents page. As well as this this page does not have an editorial, or at least doesn't have one that can be seen, in my own this is placed in the bottom right box which here is the review section. Another difference is how in Q's contents page every page number has a sub line describing the article. I would most definitely have adopted that onto my own design, the only real reason I did not was to prevent a cluttering of text, as I opted to use a number of images where the page numbers are listed. Other Q contents pages have featured a similar design of "popping out" images that are placed in amongst the columns, and this is what my own designs were based on, though it is not entirely conventional, I felt that it made the contents page look more interesting, to a degree interactive, but overall better looking. I feel it did not look awkward, and instead looks more aesthetically pleasing having images placed around the chronological ordered text. 

As well as this I used a different heading for the regulars section, entitled instead "Fan Features", as I wanted to incorporate articles that weren't necessarily classed as regular articles. This was to enhance the interactive feel of the magazine and again reinforce the idea it is one of the more successful music magazines by having plenty of fan related information on it. Un-conventional to a degree when compared to this contents page by Q magazine which refers to this section as "Monthly" which is basically regular articles.

The image on the left shows a word cloud for the key conventions of the double page spread. My own person DPS was technically a four page spread, but served the same purpose, and with it again I did not deviate that much from the conventional methods used in music magazine DPS'. My article firstly stuck to the house style of my magazine, and obviously made use of columns which really, had I not, would have resulted in an article that wouldn't even look like it came from a magazine. Page numbers, key quotes, a sidebar and a footer are all minor conventions that aren't as obvious that I made use of to add extra conventional detail and present the article as realistic.

On the right is a double page spread from Kerrang, a magazine of which I borrowed some inspiration from despite not being a main influence of mine. Whilst I took most inspiration from Q and NME, these were paper based and this example provides some conventions that I utilised. I chose a white background with a gradient tint because I felt for the reader it would be much easier to read and generally with black on white it would be very difficult to go wrong. I used a drop capital at the start which is a common feature of practically every magazine, and I also used a footer as seen in this image of which displays the edition and page number.

I also used captions of my images as is seen in this DPS, which I used to the same effect of adding that extra bit of information on the artists and hence enhancing the realism of the article. As well as this I used pull quotes, because as a convention that is something the reader almost expects when they look at a DPS. I also used a sidebar which is displayed in this example because I thought that adding one to show the artists discography would also expand the story provided in the article and would provide an interesting insight into the fictional artist. With the images used, I shared a similar design in some ways, for example most of my images were in boxes as seen in this example and to the side of the page, but as well as that I also used images that would stand almost independent on the page and look like they were coming out of it. This is a feature which is almost part of my magazines house style and was borrowed from Rolling Stone and NME predominantly, but also used in most magazines. Also this example shows custom designs such as the two notepads, I used my own custom designs in the ink splatters which are attributed to the artist from the front cover and are used in the background of the DPS to give space for pull quotes.

I did however break some conventions, although not shown in this example I did not use a stand first at the beginning of my DPS article, rather I decided to use an introductory subheading to ease into the start of the article. Whilst I feel even without the stand first the article still looks appropriate due to the use of other text conventions, perhaps it would have been better had I instead just stuck with using a stand first as well. I used the same register that is featured in most music magazines, of not being too formal and still addressing the reader quite casually. Another convention I did not use for the DPS was a byline, which although I feel wasn't necessary because I didn't think it added anything informative, to make it look more convincing I probably would have been better using it. Instead I just used an ending strap line, informing the readers of the artisits' music and advertising the magazine's website. I used this because I think it it added to the credibility of the magazine and is something that again is featured in the majority of music magazines' lead articles.