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

The logo I’ve used in the top left corner of my magazine has clear similarities to the logo used for Q magazine, as the text is white on a bold coloured background and is boxed into the corner. The subheadings are each separated with lines in between to make it clear that each is featured in my magazine. The larger pieces of text, which are the names of music artists, are followed by a brief descriptive line underneath in smaller text to catch the eye of readers so that they can spot the artists that they’re interested in reading about or are fond of. The circle in the top corner is used in the same way as Q magazine does, as it highlights the text inside it as readers might find this factor attractive and would convince them to purchase the magazine. I decided to place a sell line for a freebie in the circle as professional magazines, especially for music, often give away free posters, CD samples, etc. for their readers. I featured a quote by the main focus of the magazine in the corner to give a preview of what the article will be like and influences readers to want to read more inside.
I’ve used the idea of ‘Inside this week’ from NME magazine as I found this title more interesting for a contents page than just ‘Contents’. I’ve made page numbers larger than all of the other text to make them stand out, and this makes the magazine easier to navigate around for the reader and they can easily find what they want to read quickly. To improve my contents page from my first draft, I added page numbers to the artist list so readers know where to go to read about the ones that interest them. I wrote catchy contents lines to attract the reader to visiting each page, like professional magazines do. However I may alter these in my next draft to have a title and description, like on the front page, as Q magazine does. I could break my contents up into sections e.g. ‘on the cover’ and ‘regulars’ to make my magazine even more similar to a professional one, and again making the magazine more accessible to readers as if something catches their eye on the front cover, they are then able to access this straight away from the contents page.
My first double page spread of my magazine is largely inspired by an NME article featuring Mike Skinner. I chose this article to go by when making my double page spread as I found, as a reader myself, that the headline is very eye catching and the large image covering the left page is striking towards the reader. The font used for the headline is simple yet bold, with the music artist’s name standing out more than anything else on the page, so it’s made incredibly obvious what the focus of the article is. I chose to fill one whole page with a photo as I feel my target audience will appreciate an image this large of the music artist if they are a big fan. As my magazine is aimed at teenage fans of pop music, readers may use this photo to stick up on their bedroom walls to idolize their favourite singers, as my target audience typically do. The pull quote is surrounded by two boldly coloured lines, fitting in with the house style, to emphasise the quote. Professional magazines do this in order to attract attention and also to break up the text, so it doesn’t just look like one big chunk of text. This is also why I’ve added a photo within the text, with text wrapped around it. Readers may notice the pull quote and base their decision on whether or not they shall read the article on this, so it’s vital to have bold clear pull quotes, in the recognisable house style.