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

There are many conventions that music magazines follow. For example the large masthead across the top of the cover; an index of bands in the magazine; a striking, usually intimidating, cover image of a male music artist or band; and a drop cap at the start of an article. Most music magazines are aimed at men, with a male readership of between 70% and 85%, depending on the music genre, and most popular music magazine will either be for mainstream pop or heavy rock and metal. I have chosen to go against convention and create a folk-rock music magazine aimed almost exclusively at a female audience.

Evaluation of the cover (or click the image to view the evaluation in flickr):

Ingenue Cover
Originally uploaded by Victoria Maitland

I chose a very conventional position for masthead, in keeping with many magazines. In particular I took inspiration from the Rolling Stone cover, keeping the mast head behind the main image. This keeps the main focus on the striking cover image, showing that this magazine trusts its readers to recognise it and enticing new readers with the celebrity presence rather than the title of the magazine. I chose Ingénue – meaning naïve or innocent – as the title for my magazine because the use of a loan word connotes intelligence, therefore flattering my audience. The phonetics of the name sound floaty, soft and delicate, creating a strong house style.

My date line is also conventional, small and barely noticeable. I chose to separate the date and price with the masthead, mimicking the layout of my contents page. The red colour of the date line also provides cohesion with the contents page.

The position of the barcode mimics that of many fashion magazines, which place their barcodes on the side of the page in whitespace so as not to detract from the image and main articles.

My main cover line relates to the main image, creating cohesion. It is conventional in this sense, however many main cover lines are placed either to the left or right of the page. I chose mine to be centred so attract more attention to the main article.

I placed my other cover lines down both the left and right thirds of the magazine, mirroring that of a fashion magazine layout. I chose to do this rather than the traditional cover lines down the left third because I wanted it to appear almost as if the model was blowing out the cover lines. However I chose to place my most eye-catching article on the left third of the page, so they would be the ones most easily seen when the magazine is on a sale rack.

My main image is more conventional of a fashion magazine than a music one, but this identifies well with the fashion theme and interest articles within the magazine. The model is staring directly at the camera, making a bold statement and drawing in the audience with her captivating eyes. This contrasts well with the white eyelashes and pale make-up, making the image very arresting. However as my audience is predominately female my image is not sexualised in any way. This goes against the conventions of many music magazines as when there is a female cover star the image is sexy and provocative as it needs to attract their predominately male audience.