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

My magazine “RAW” is a heavy metal based music magazine. My magazine closely follows conventions of other similar magazines in its category; however it does differ slightly from the most popular of music magazines.

My music magazine is similar to Kerrang! In the sense that they are primarily both about heavy metal, but on the other hand the layouts are similar as well, due to the fact that I loosely based my magazine on Kerrang! They both have big, bold, striking Mastheads to draw in the readers’ eye. The Sell lines are positioned mostly towards the bottom half of the front cover and a powerful picture of the main focal band of the week. As is compulsory on any products; my magazine includes a barcode and price. It also includes a website URL and a tag-line underneath the masthead itself. The information included on my front page was made up by me but I tried to keep it interesting as official music magazines have professionals coming up with sell lines that capture the reader and make them want to read the story. This is accomplished through the use of puns and or excessive use of punctuation to seem aesthetically appealing to readers “System of a Down – Still down under”. My contents page has 4 subheadings; which is typical of most music magazines as it breaks the contents down further into more easy-to-read topics, allowing the reader to quickly find what they’re looking for or simply to see what features in this week’s particular issue. The double page spreads are also alike to most other music magazine equivalents; an interview, surrounding a picture or two of the person/band in question. With clear signs of text wrapping used to boast the professionalism of my magazine to the actual reader.

I attempted to avoid challenging the typical forms and conventions used in the creation of magazines in media, specifically because they are used and referred to as ‘typical conventions’ because they do exactly what they are intended to do; attract the audience’s attention and convey information in an entertaining and enjoyable way.