Question 1

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

The magazine I created did use a lot of the very conventional items usually seen in magazines. A few of these conventional pieces would consist of: a masthead, taglines, and a main slugline - the magazine itself took inspiration from other rock magazines, Kerrang! in specific; I took information from their use of backgrounds, positioning of the models on the page, and also with the font, these things helped me to create a magazine that obviously belonged to a specific genre. In a specific instance I couldn’t get my magazine to look right, there was something about it which looked wrong, and after looking at some examples of real magazines it was clear that covers are usually not done in very dark colours - by making a magazine that had a black cover I was going outside of the norm and challenging expectations. In order to make it look presentable I found that I had to put the background on a gradient, making it appear lighter and darker in some areas to give it depth - a block colour would not work very well with dark colours. I originally went for the darker theme due to the connection that is has with the genre of music I would be writing about (rock/heavy rock is usually associated with darkness), and as magazines do not usually go for darker themes, I believe that I tried to develop this convention of this genre of magazine - going the extra step when it comes to identifying the magazine by colours.

The fonts I used (and the ways I decorated them) were also influenced by generic rock magazine conventions - fonts were usually largely distorted to connotate the ‘destructive’ and ‘corrosive’ manner of the music genre, with the music being usually described as harsh to the ears. The fonts I employed were large, looking corroded and crumbling - I also used a technique called ‘double exposure’ to layer another piece of corrosiveness over the text, this gave it more of the themed effect. The name I chose to give my magazine links in with this also, keeping the crumbling and distorted theme going I aptly named the magazine ‘Breakdown’, this had multiple reasons behind it. One of these reasons conforms with the genre, meaning for something to physically stop working and break, this connects to the destructive theme and also conotes that the magazine is rather breaking down because of the music, or the other vice versa; the other meaning doesn’t conform with the norm though, meaning to break down the different bands and songs and find out what their stories are, seeing behind the curtain. This doesn’t conform as it seems to be showing an emotional side to rock, looking at the people behind it and appreciating them, which is the opposite of what is usually associated with rock.

As well as conforming with the norm with my choice of colours, I also went out of my way to try and challenge the expectations from a rock magazine; because of this, I specifically chose yellow as my secondary colour. The yellow would originally seem strange, but with the way I employed it I believe I managed to make it look good to a point where it doesn’t ruin the cover and contents. I challenged this convention due to the colours being usually associated with rock being darker, and tried to challenge myself when it came to making the magazine look appealing and to stand out from the rest that would be on the shelf - I think that this addition makes it stand out effectively to most magazines of the same type.