In whats ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Front Cover
My front cover for my Music magazine sets a clear and concise target audience for the brand, like many rock/ alternative music magazines the front cover is what draws the readers in with the choice of colour and images. A lot of my inspiration for my cover came from mostly Q publications, I wanted to convey a clean looking style, embrasing not a minimalist style but I know I did not want the cluttered look, that of Kerrang. Origonally I used colours like yellow and blue in my cover along with my Red, Black, and white but it through my eyes made my page look muddled and more along the lines Mojo or Kerrang.
The codes and conventions king of my Magazine Cover can be seen in the images, both technically and Symbolicly. Technically, as in Camera work, for my subsidiary image of the Yellowcard concert, I knew prior to the concert it would be good to use this as an opertunity for me to take some images for my pages. I wanted to take them from the view of the crowd, so this involved getting as close as I could to the stage. Although in the image it looks that of an amature photogapher, to be honest I wanted to try and challenge the common conventions in magazine photography by attempting to create a better link between audience and magazine. By taking it from an audience members perspective, it creates the sense that we are one of the crowd, we are amoungst the audience not just in the back rooms doing exclusive interviews and photo shoots.
The codes in the Symbolic way, can be seen in the expression in my main image and in other images of the main artist, like in my Article. The blank expression and with the model looking away from the camera gives a almost care free attitude, she is someone who doesnt care what people think, she is confident in herself and independant, and the lack of eye contact presents this personality well. The attitudes of the artists have a direct effect on the reader and that is what Iwanted my magazine to be able to do. The magazine is fitted and taylored around its audience and by presenting certain emotions and expressions the audience as part of the magazines following will subconciously mimik these actions to fit to their desired taste in music and artists.
My music magazines Masthead Unstrung was tailored around Q magazines masthead. I wanted the same effect in it being eye catching but also simplistic at the same time. I loved the colours udes with the Q magazine masthead, the vibrant red with the white gave it a strong, easy to recognise effect. I used the same for mine, but adding my own idea to the table as well. On the head of guitars are usually the Name of the company that produce the product, E.g Gibson, Epiphone, Ibinez. These are usually in slanted fonts with flowing lines. I wanted to make that link to my own masthead, by having this guitar background with he masthead it creates a link with the magazine and genre. Usually are associated with guitars are genres like Rock, Alternative, Metal and Indie. 
For this area of my magazine cover, following the typical grid fashion I placed my coverlines and my splash. I stuck to the three main colours and to my two main fonts, Scrip MT Blod and Franlin Gothick Heavy. The base colour being black but i used red to highlight the more relevant infromation in the section and then for a larger story, "Yellowcard" I used white to make it stand out amoungst the rest, as in my opinion its along with "The Waiting Game" was one of the top storied accessable in the magazine. This follows the usual convention for most magazines, but Ichose to keep all my information on one side of the page, apart from a pull quote. Whereas some magazines have it on either side of the main image, but like Q, I wanted a less cluttlered look so the reader was not overwelmed with information all over the page. I kept the coverlines to a minimum only using the best stories and news to fill this space. Like exclusive access to information, again drawing the reader in, making them feel special and fortunate. Part of a group of people to know the information amoungst the huge crowd "Exclusive 2014 Gig Guide!"
With my Header and Footer bars I wanted to not distract the reader to much from the main information so I kept information to a minimum, and used them just as a way to promote smaller stories or to show the audience that the brand is a multi-platform brand, as the Fotter bar gives a link to the Brands website where as said in the Header bar you can vote for last years top artist, and in the Footer bar gives referance to other media forms like videos ect. As I said my magazine had been made around the ideas in the Q magazine publications, but the majority of Q's pulished covers do not have header and footer bars. Origonally I was going to follow the same but I did not like the look of the page without them. I think they play a key roll in tying the page together by creating a boarder on the page.
I wanted to display this post in a Prezi, But I found that transfering it to blogger made it easier to read and follow where I was, and what I was speaking about. My other two posts on the Article and Double Pge Contents will be in the Prezi Format. And will later be added to this Post.
