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

Some existing Rock/Punk magazines with their conventions labeled.

Masthead

As you can see the main conventions of a masthead are for it to be large, bold and at the top of the page. It's also a convention to cover the masthead with the main image - although I did this, I didn't go as extreme  to cover whole letters. I did this because this was the 'first issue' of my magazine, and the brand name 'Savage' wouldn't be as well known as names like Kerrang. If I was to make another front cover, I'd probably cover more of the brand name. It also seems that a lot of the Mastheads are white text. Looking back at mine I feel it would have looked better in white, as the background is quite dark so it may have made it stand out more. I drew inspiration from Kerrang's font when making my magazine, using the eroded, almost melancholy typeface to create connotations of raw, almost grungy Rock. Most mastheads use just one colour in the text, but I used a very slight hint of red around the cracks to give more definition and depth. When making the font, I followed the convention of using a bold, sans serif, capital font.

Skyline

There are many different loose conventions of a magazine skyline. Most notably they intent to attract the reader's attention with bright, bold text and plug a story, competition or free thing (the example above is 5 free posters). I decided to plug the 'band merch' competition in my skyline, I used the same style as the footer (bellow) and used the convention of bright block colour (red) to attract the attention of the reader. I also added the website here. Most of the time the website isn't in the skyline, but I developed the convention for my magazine as I thought that the website was quite an important part of the 'Savage' magazine franchise - so I wanted it to be somewhere obvious and clear.

If I was to make my magazine again I would probably change the skyline to something else, because the 'competition' is plugged in two different parts of the cover. I did this because I wanted it to be obvious and attract potential readers, but I think if someone was to take a proper look at the magazine, one plug would have been ample.

Main Image

Generally the cover image has three main conventions:

The image is heavily photoshopped to perfection

This is a convention used all across the media industry. This makes the band members flawless and perfect, and more eye catching. It looks more professional and keeps the readers attention.

The band is looking at the camera (direct mode of address) 

This engages the reader with the band, and creates a connection between them. People are therefore more likely to pick up and buy the magazine.

The 3D effect created by masking the masthead behind the models. 

This is another convention that is also used across all of the media industry. Again this makes he magazine seem more professional, and makes the cover image stand out. 

The image also takes up a large majority of the page, which makes it stand out even more. It compliments the feature story sums up the cover. The images are also usually studio shots taken on good cameras.

I used all of these conventions when adding my cover photo, but I challenged one. Usually the photos are very high quality with perfect white balance and lighting, but  I wanted the picture to have an almost archaic effect, and a prosumer sort of feel. To do this I used a decent entry level DSLR (The Cannon 600D), and then I changed he brightness, contrast, levels and curves to create the effect. I made the main female model slightly brighter to make her stand out, and amongst other thing, brought the models closer together and enlarged he whole picture. The style of the magazine is quite scrap-book-chic, and this is why I tried to make this effect.

If I was to make the magazine again, I would spend another day taking photos to get a few decent, professional looking photos, which I'd put onto the magazine. I'd then be able to compare them side by side with the 'prosumerish' photos on my current magazine and be able to make a good side by side judgement on what I thought looked best. 

Price

Although it is a convention to have the price on the magazine's cover, I decided to challenge this convention and not use it, this is because I want to put it on the back. I didn't want the price of the magazine to distract the reader from the magazine.

But because the Price being on the front page is such a strong convention, and I wouldn't want to risk jeopardising possible private and retail customers, I will add this in on the final front cover I post.

Barcode

The barcode is an important functional part of the cover, this allows it to be scanned at checkout in a shop and helps with technological integration (e.g. automatic stock management etc.) 

Issue

The issue number is also on the cover, this is a convention and is useful because it allows readers to know which is the latest version without looking at the date of publication. 

Colour Schemes

Here's the photoshop template I created and used to make the graphics bellow, I found photos of 3 major magazine covers online, and then used the online application palettefx.com to create an overall, non bias computer generated colour scheme of the magazine. The online software finds harmonious colour chords based on the spectrum of colours that make up the magazine, including the text, main photo and any other graphics.

The cover is sampled using a unique algorithm developed by graphic designers and a colour palette is created "with a diverse sampling of vibrant hues". The colour pallets are then put behind three main colours that I thought stood out the most. With the two Rolling Stone magazines, I used the text to find the three colours, and with the other 4 magazines, I looked at the picture overall, and picked out the three colours that I thought stood out to me the most.


I found that a black and white appeared a lot, and this was mainly due to the text, but also red, yellow and a lot of pastel/tertiary colours were also used, these came mostly from the skin tones and clothing worn by the models.

My magazine used a Red and Black colour scheme. As my magazine is a Punk Rock magazine, the Kerrang colour scheme is important (as it's a similar magazine), I looked at that for inspiration on what should be my third colour. Kerrang uses yellow, which is a bold primary colour. I obviously wanted my magazine to differ, so I used Adobe's Colour Wheel online software to help choose the third colour. I used the Triad, Complimentary and Compound colour rule settings to find an overall colour scheme for my magazine.

So from these colour schemes, my options for the third colour were: Orange, Green, Cyan Blue or Yellow. I'd also use white for text, but I'm not including this as one of my main three colours. My favourite colour scheme is the last picture (so: Red, Yellow, Cyan Blue, Black and White), but I experimented with all of them until I got onto actually designing the cover.

Here you can see my magazine with the colour scheme I used. I used Black and Red which are conventional, and then blue (Blue Dianne). I chose the colour red because it is conventional, it looks good and stands out, I chose black because it it also conventional of the Punk Pop genre, and then I chose the Blue Dianne because it went well with the style I was trying to achieve,

Font

I used a range of different fonts, this included making my own logo font:

Double Page Spread

Here are some of the main conventions of a Double Page Spread as shown by three different issues of Kerrang.

And here's my magazine:

My magazine's DPS follows most of the main conventions of most double page spreads. It has a pull quote, a main image that covers most of the page, page number, text with drop capital, extra images, colour scheme, bold band name etc.

One convention that I haven't followed is the main image model's eyeline. Conventionally the model in the main image is looking directly at the camera and engaging the reader, but in my magazine, the model is looking away from the camera. The idea was that the model was looking away from the story and putting it behind him, which worked with the idea of the artist I'd created leaving the band 'Paralel' he was in and putting them behind him. I then contrasted this by adding single photos of the different members of the band, this was to create connotations of them being split up in the future and turning into solo artists. 

Contents Page

Here are some of the main conventions of a Magazine's contents page as shown by three different issues of Kerrang.

And here's my contents page:

My contents page has all of the conventions of most magazine contents page. It has a colour scheme, a title, the logo of the magazine, an index of both feature stories and bands, a letter from the editor, and advertisement for the readers to subscribe, and multiple main images.

Different magazines have different house styles and conventions that they follow for their contents pages, which is why my magazine doesn't follow the exact same conventions and layout as the contents pages above from Kerrang.

I have also used conventions that are usually found in different parts of my magazine for my contents page, this includes masking an image over text (the models head slightly covers the 'E' of 'Exclusive'. I also used the ripped paper effect that I used on my cover to link the two together. The Model in the bottom right hand corner is on all of my media products.