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

During the research stage I looked at many different magazines in and out of my genre choice to see lots of different ideas of real magazines and to see what i liked best about them and what I didn't. I also looked at different magazines to get ideas of what I could use in my very own magazine so I could make it look as realistic as possible. Looking at the different lay outs of covers and the plans, the 'F Plan', the 'Z Plan' and the 'E Plan'. I like the look of the Z plan in magazines that I looked at the best as it allows the reader to read left to right, then across, then left to right again and I felt as it was the easiest to read so when planning my magazine I took the Z plan into consideration and tried to make my magazine like that.

Researching different magazines it was clear that i needed to use the rule of three; the way the page is divided portrait and landscape, the colour scheme and the different fonts that are used. This is so it didn't too cluttered and un easy on the eye. I looked though many magazines, front to back, and on the internet to see what colours worked best and to see what colours were used the most in media today. I also looked at the colour scheme to see what appealed to different types of people and different genders as the colour scheme has to match the type of audience that i wanted to read my magazine.

Initially I tried to almost copy the look and design of the NME magazines as I liked the look of them and it fit perfectly into my genre of music and type of audience I was going for. I liked the idea of a short bold magazine title as it would be easy to remember and the mast head is the largest text on the page so it makes it eye catching and easy to read so the reader knows exactly what the magazine is. I also liked the colour scheme of only having a couple of colours, like red and black, on  a white background with the artists on the front doing different poses. 

I came up with the idea of one person being upside down at the top of the page and another the right side up at the bottom of the page myself as i thought it was a creative, innovative idea that was quite unusual but still looked good.

I changed the look of the magazine a lot to fit in with a new magazine, called 'Link', that I had found that looked a lot better and well organised than NME so I took that as inspiration and it helped me crate my magazine by it giving me strong ideas for my cover which i could carry on through to my contents and double page spread as well. but, I still kept elements of NME magazine within my magazine such as the short title and large mast head and also simple colour scheme which was also used in the Link magazine.

I focused a lot on the graphology and type of language within the magazine as i wanted to get the right look and read for my audience that I had chosen. Testing a lot i needed to find and create the most appealing look of my magazine which is both easy to read and also looks good. The best this is shown in my magazine is the contents page. It uses a good font for all of the page as it shows what is important on the page and what is not and also the size and positioning of the font shows what is needed to be read first so it makes it easy for the reader to know what is going to come up. I took the idea of using the rule of three from other magazines is the columns of the contents by putting the text and contents into three straight columns with a picture in the middle column to show the importance of the 

article.

Pictures: Pictures were the essential part of the magazine as it shows what is going to be within the magazine and it pulls in the right audience for the magazine as the band/artist on the front has to appeal to the genre of the magazine and to the audience. Also, the mise en scene impacts the picture as the setting has to be in a place that the band would be normally in and maybe relate to the readers and also what they wear has to be similar to the reader so it sets trends and appeals to them. I loosely based my magazine cover on this NME magazine (right) of Disclosure where both of the artists are upside down. However, I did not like the idea of both of the artists being upside down as it can get confusing and it is right behind the mast head so it draws your attention away from one or the other. So I decided to flip the left one over to make it the right side up so it compliments the Z plan a lot more with one in the top right and a bother in the bottom left and out also leaves room for text next to the pictures. I also had the pictures close up with just enough to see the top of the persons shirts to show off the fashion but closer so it shows the emotion and look of the people on the magazine. On my Double page spread I did a mid shot of my artists to show off the fashion a lot more and also show what they are doing in the picture and how they would feel.