Proposal

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

My Magazine, Sub Conscious, focus’ on the Bass Music genre, (e.g Drum N’ Bass, Dubstep) as I felt it was the genre I could relate to most closely. I used magazines such as NME for inspiration and included ideas taken from them and edited them to fit my genre, making it look and feel as realistic as possible. When I began drafting my magazine I tried to stick with the typical codes and conventions of NME, and laid it out similarly to an Indie/Rock magazine, as they have similar characteristics (rebellion, heavy music, and youth) as the Bass Music scene. I referred to my similar product research Prezi that I had made throughout the tasks to ensure I was including as many of the common conventions as I could.

Before I began creating my magazin, I drafted ideas of a unique name for my magazine, and an eye-catching masthead allowing it to stand out to its audience and all the other magazines on the shelves. I created several designs on Adobe Photoshop CS3; bold, distorted, battered, faded and colourful. Although because of the long title name it was hard to find a fitting font. In the end I found a don’t that suited, although I don’t think it’s bold and eye-catching enough. I plan to edit this and make sure it’s looking as good as possible before I finally submit my work.

The first thing you notice when you look at a magazine is the main image on the front, followed by the masthead, seeing whether either interest you because of the high reputation they have. I added to my masthead by stroking it in black as well as putting an outer glow around my two main images on the front which had been put on together. This contributes to the colour scheme held throughout the magazine and is consistent to allow the reader to keep focus throughout the magazine. I came up with original sell line ideas, and listed several artists featured in the magazine which attracts the audience’s attention straight away and allows them to easily see the big names that most would be attracted to, helping sell the magazine. This slightly subverted the conventions as NME have never had an artist index on their front covers that I have seen, as this is normally displayed on the contents page. I have also included a banner at the bottom with a larger ‘10’ in a circle in the bottom left corner to attract the attention of the reader further, a barcode, the date, issue number and price as these are all features that always found on the front cover of any magazine.

My contents page has a similar layout the NME magazine, although I have made mine into a double page spread. The page is split up into several sections, some more eye-catching than others due to images or brighter colours. The column on the right hand side includes heading such as ‘News’, ‘Radar’, ‘Features’, ‘Reviews’ and ‘Exclusive’. These are all common headlines you would find in music magazine. This is likely to appeal to my target audience as it is easy to look for the desired section and page number, so they can navigate their way through my magazine with ease. The left hand side includes artist names and page numbers next to them, again helping the audience navigate to the page of their favourite artist easier. The main image is of ‘Faperace’, which would draw in the audience who are interested in him. Above him are also ‘RVM’s Essential Items’ catching the readers eye with the bold ‘WIN’. This is suitable for this issue as he is on the front cover, therefore people who buy this issue are probably interested in him. Each page is accompanied by page numbers so my target audience can quickly go to the page of interest. I have included features such as the issue number, date, editor’s note and Facebook/Twitter icons to show the audience they can have our services and up to date news 24/7. As these features are all included in magazines such as NME, I am following the typical conventions of music magazines.