In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
My magazine has taken inspiration from Kerrang Magazine and Classic Rock Magazine. Both of these publications conveyed the rock genre effectively, with Kerrang focusing on the aggression and Classic Rock looking at showing the ‘rock star’ lifestyle. I tried to pull in both of these aspects by using an aggressive appearance in conjunction with content that gives an insight into the life of the artists themselves. For the fonts I decided to use the website dafont.com to find grungy and worn typefaces to show informality and a relation to the ‘alternative’ division of rock that I had chosen to show. For the masthead I used white for the text to allow it to stand out on the black background, and increased the size of the ‘mental’ part of the word ‘Instrumental’ to also show context. Taking inspiration from Kerrang’s masthead, I added an exclamation mark to show volume, as if someone was shouting the word. This connotes the style of music featured in the magazine, namely loud, eccentric and powerful riffs. For the colour palette I looked at how Classic Rock magazine used colour to highlight or emphasise the important aspects of the page. The particular magazine that I looked at which had a main feature on Led Zeppelin used red, white and black in a rather striking way. The reason why red was used was because it relates to the general branding theme used by Led Zeppelin to show relevancy. This seemed like an interesting idea to use colours relevant to the artist so I used red, orange, white and black because my artist, Pyro, relates to fire (or red and orange colouring). Pyro means fire in Latin, so I based my palette around this accordingly. Another reason why I chose these colours is because they fit nicely into the rock genre, with red and black in particular representing the heavier side of rock. This means that the chances of dedicated rock fans noticing the magazine will increase, along with the potential profits.
Another convention that I tried to imitate was the layout of the Kerrang contents page. I liked how the main feature piece was shown by using a large image that took up around half of the page as this really grabs the attention of the reader and also makes for a good background for listing the other feature articles in detail. The actual contents part was split into sections such as features, competitions and reviews, so I decided to carry this method into my page. Furthermore, this layout as a whole rejects the usual F and Z models in favour of a golden spiral, which was particularly useful for me as I was able to ensure that the audience focused on the main features first before reading about the less important content. Typography-wise I chose to use similar fonts to those on my front cover to show theme and reinforce the genre, and ensured that the sizes of the fonts varied appropriately e.g. large text for headings. However, for the body text I used a clear font (Tw Cen MT) to ensure it was easy to read at a smaller size.
In my magazine I wanted to feature content that would be easily associated with rock and the people that place themselves within. My target audience is 18-28 year olds, so as this age group is fairly young I decided to add an ‘online’ section to the contents page which informed the reader that the magazine has a website. Stereotypically the younger generations are more likely to use the internet than older people because they are generally more technologically endowed. I also touched on the social networking side of the internet by mentioning a relevant blog, in the hope that this would also appeal to the target audience. For the news section I focused on including popular bands that would interest the reader, and these ranged from old to new acts. Rather than focus on one time period like the magazines that I’ve look at for my research I rejected this and included past bands such as Metallica and Guns ‘N’ Roses as I believe that they still appeal to today’s audiences and thus should not be forgotten. It is also shows an understanding of what the rock genre is all about, which helps the readers to trust that the articles will be written with this firmly in mind. With the competitions I detailed ‘prizes’ that would interest the reader like a limited edition guitar and Foo Fighters tickets, and for the features I looked at showing a different aspect of rock for each one. The ‘Rock: revolution’ feature looks at the genre in history by going back to the start of punk rock in the 80’s, there is a mini biography of Steve Ouimette (popular guitarist); an article on power metal band Dragonforce and the main feature artist Pyro. One piece I wanted to add in was a guitar tutorial feature that showed the reader some tips and tricks on how to play the guitar like a professional. I didn’t really see this in any of the magazines I looked at but I think it would be an appealing and useful feature for the target audience. furthermore, by using professional artists such as Slash in the feature it allows multiple fans to find appeal in the feature, as well as give a good ‘education’ on different styles of guitar playing.
