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

The media product I have produced follows the forms and conventions of real media products. I constructed my final magazine cover design to echo recognisable techniques used in magazine design that I had observed. I was interested by magazines such as NME which speaks to a fashionable readership who are interested in music, and OK which is a gossip weekly which trades in celebrity news. Both of the magazines and many others box the title treatment in a strong colour which makes it stand out, so I used this technique and put a box around my magazine title. This does make the 'Unsung' text jump out and it also creates more of a logo with the use of a secondary colour .  When following this conventional layout I only wanted to use one primary image without  secondary images and very minimal text. I made this choice  after looking at other music magazines, and I found that the magazines who used minimal design were the more arty ones. The magazines front cover is its biggest advertisement  for the publication so they are commonly very cluttered with sell lines about the contents.  The point of my magazine was that it was aimed at a more discerning and sophisticated readership who would be attracted by good design rather than clutter. I was therefore keen to keep my front cover minimal as the cover feature was the magazine's biggest selling point.

When constructing my final contents page I also looked at the forms and conventions of real media products. As the purpose of the contents page is largely practical, there are very good reasons to following conventional form in this instance. The challenge is to make each item seem interesting while keeping the layout clear and easy to read. I used a sort of 'scrapbook approach to make it more interesting and  I introduced a musical agony aunt in order to add extra value and personality to this page. On the whole, I was happy with the result and felt that the Front cover and the contents page both related well and served their purpose and I think over all I have used the exsisting  forms and conventions of real media well when creating my own magazine design.