Script
The media product I have created used and develops conventions of real media products, through features such as my masthead, images, cover line, and over all just design features and how to maintain house style across the entire magazine.
Before constructing my final pieces I carried out some research in order to discover what the typical magazine conventions were. The most obvious thing I found was that the name of the magazine must be relatable and relevant to the music genre. For example, ‘Kerrang!’ is a rock music magazine; this is clear due to the connotations, as the name itself is an onomatopoeic sound of an electric guitar chord, the fact that electric guitars are widely associated with the music genre of rock shows that the name is appropriate. Also the appearance of the masthead clearly gives off the impression of rock due to the cracked glass feature on the text.
For my title I have decided to go for an abbreviation of CRB, this is because the original name (Contemporary R&B) was too long winded and not catchy, also the name directly addresses the music genre. From my research I noticed that abbreviated mastheads were a common convention used by music magazines such as NME (New Musical Express).
Another way in which my magazine uses the conventions of real media products in through the positioning of my masthead, I set it to the top left corner of the magazine page. For instance, mastheads of a short length e.g. Q, NME and RNB, I noticed that they’re always placed at the top left corner of the page.
House style is a key magazine convention and it is important that this is maintained throughout the magazine. A key way to maintain house style is through the colour scheme. I have kept my house style by maintaining the colour pink across all the pages, and generally the colours grey, red, black and pink. Q magazine for example are consistent with the colour of red and white due to the colour of their logo.
My main image is a medium long shot. Magazines do not conventionally have a specific shot type used, they are however usually studio photo shoots (with a plain coloured backdrops\ background). This is done to avoid there being any problems when editing the photo, and also to avoid any collisions with colour for the font and background when constructing the magazine. For this reason the location of my photo shoot was in a bedroom with a plain background, I then later on (when editing) removed the background to make a grey background with a subtle hint of white as I felt that this colour was complementary with any colour. The Jennifer Lopez Billboard issue inspired my background choice and the mise en scène. I made sure that my model had her gaze towards the audience and was making eye contact. This is a typical and significant magazine convention used to engage with the reader, and grasp their attention.
Conventionally, cover lines consist of artist names related to the music genre, interviews, and most importantly the name of the artist that is the main feature of the magazine, the layout usually consists of a heading, and a brief summary below. I have contended with this convention by including 3 prominent artist names (Beyoncé, The Weekend and Adele), and the name of the article featured in the front cover of the magazine with a pull quote. Through research I found that the purpose of cover lines is to engage readers, and create mystery to encourage them to read on and find all the answers to their questions in their head, this will therefore lead to an increase in sales. I feel that I have used this magazine convention successfully as my cover lines bring questions such as ‘why would Beyoncè not want to collaborate with Adele?’
On the front cover, magazines also tend to have exclusive features to differentiate their magazines from their rivals. This usually includes free and exclusive features and competitions. I have used this magazine convention by including an exclusive list of top tracks from 2015. And also through a competition, but this was in my contents page.
Placing a barcode and price of the magazine is s typical magazine convention which I have obeyed to.
Moving on to the content page, from research I realised that they don’t have to be portrait they can also be landscape e.g. Q magazine’s issue with Adele. Due to the (large) amount of content my magazine had to have, as it was a monthly magazine, I decided to go for the double page landscape in order to fit my list of contents on the page. For contents pages in real music magazines, one of the main conventions was the page numbers; from my research I discovered that monthly magazines tend to have 100+ pages, whilst weekly magazines have between 40-80 pages. Knowing this, I then went on to give my magazine 110 pages at a price of £3.50.
One typical magazine convention found in the majority of real music magazines is that they commonly have 3 columns or more. For example Billboard format their content page into 3 columns. However there are some magazines that go against these conventions such as vibe magazine and Mojo magazine. The columns are used to divide the contents of the magazine into section. Each column consists of headings used for segmentation. Theses headings used in the majority of magazines are ‘features’ and‘ reviews’, the rest of the headings are usually manipulated to suit the genre or magazine. E.g. NME has a section called ‘This Week’, this is suitable for them as their magazine is issued weekly.
Whilst analysing real magazine contents pages I noticed that the heading ‘Contents’ is a very prominent feature of the page as the font size is usually the largest on the page, this is because its used to inform the consumer what page they’re on.
Contents pages usually feature studio shots and pictures of the artists performing, album covers. I have included this in my content pages, and ensure that there was a maximum of 2 images of the featured artists. From my research I also found that there was a minimum of 1 image and a maximum of 6 images on the content pages. Images in real music magazines most of the time have an image with a removed background, and images that remain on their original background.
Page number design is a design element used in all magazines is different ways; one similarity is that they all have the magazine logo beside it.
Lastly for the double page spread I decided to do two. One with an image of the featured artist, name and introduction to the cover story and the second one with an image of the left and the rest of the cover story on the right page.