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

On my front cover I implemented a bar code  price and Issue number all into the bottom right hand corner. Two out of the three music magazines I analysed included a bar code with the price tag just above the bar code. Also if you search Google images for music magazine front covers you can see that the majority of them have bar codes in either the bottom right or bottom left hand corners. This is another way how my music magazine follows the conventions and themes of real media products.

One way that I challenged the conventions of real media products is that I incorporated social media onto the front cover, I did not notice this on most real media products however I felt that because of the coming of age, new technology and the dominance in social media and its use for marketing I thought it would be an appropriate inclusion on the front cover. I also showed my focus on the digital age with the use of a website address above the masthead.

My masthead follows real media themes and conventions as most music magazine publications are single "impact" words. You can read how I came up with "Pulse" here:  http://jackgirvinasmedia.blogspot.com/2013/01/main-task-discovering-magazine-name.html 
Combining the word pulse and linking it to the beat of a song similar to a heartbeat, I used a fractal image in the background to make it look like the flow of blood (Also the article header on my double page spread refers to "Young Blood"). I've also made the word bold and used a font that is wide as most real media products do so that it spreads the width of the page.

On my contents page I included this offer which I found in my research of other music magazines. Two out of the three contents pages I analysed had an offer which promoted the subscription to the magazine on their contents page. Therefore I thought it would be absolutely essential to include it in my own contents page to make it follow the conventions of real media products.
I challenged conventions of real media products with my contents page which you can read up on here: http://jackgirvinasmedia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/main-task-contents-page.html

On my double page spread I placed a large quote on the photo, I did this because during my research I noticed that most articles have quotes that are very visible, it draws the reader in with an interesting quote so that they then decide to continue reading the whole article. Also relating to the main article it is a single column which is quite common for magazines to be dominated by photos and then a small amount of text.

I have a page number in the bottom left of the double page spread which is an obvious feature that is included in every magazine. I followed the same house style colours that I've used throughout my pages; black and red.







For the photos I dressed the model in a hoodie and tracksuit trousers. The location was also in a subway. These two components to the mise-en-scene of the images helped to create an urban, underground movement style magazine piece and also helps to identify a clear target audience; the young, modern individual. 

My music magazine conforms to how they suggest the genre of music with the content. The broken vinyl represents DJs, the hoodie and trackies of the subject on the front cover shows underground and urban which already has now ruled out many genres of music. Then the use of artists names on the front cover so people can identify the type of music that the music magazine focuses on. The black and red colour scheme also shows it's quite modern and informal. The use of social media; Facebook; Twitter and Google+ on the front cover combined with a QR code and a website this all targets towards a younger, modern audience that is aware of new technologies which complements the genre of choice; Electro / Dubstep which is very much a modern genre that is produced, in some circumstances on laptops in people's bedrooms. Double page spreads often are largely dominated by a feature photo and then a small selection of the 2 pages is used for the article, my double page spread also features a small article and is mainly comprised of photos to follow such convention.