In what ways does your magazine use, develop and challenge forms and conventions of existing magazines?

I feel that with my magazine cover I have successfully been able to use, develop and challenge forms & conventions of existing magazines. With my magazine being targeted towards a Grime target audience, it really allows me to emphasis on challenging forms and conventions of other magazines purely because Grime is such a niche market with a low fan base compared to other commercial musics such as pop.

However there are forms & conventions I have followed, and the reason for this is that I feel they have to be, as if not, your magazine could fail because of it. These two forms & conventions are organization/tidiness and a house style choice of colours. This means I have conformed my magazine like others to make sure all the text is very clear and big for the reader to see from the shelf, similar to other magazines such as NME who have a very predominant title, but if we also look at other magazines from my research such as ‘GQ’ or even ‘Q’ they may use different colours for different editions, however the magazines always have a limited amount of variations in colour perhaps 3 or 4, generally 5 at the max. The reason I have used this for my magazine is that it gives off a tidy and formal aura from the shelf. Evidently my reason to include organisation as one of the forms that I have followed is so that my audience are able to clearly read from the front what the magazine contains but at the same time withholding the most important information which acts as an incentive for the customer to purchase the magazine.

I also feel that I have managed to develop conventions through the creation of my magazine cover at the same time, one of these is the recognizable side banner and logo following my masthead, if we look at other magazines which are extremely popular i.e ‘Q’, ‘GQ’, ‘NME’ & VIBE – they do have clear mastheads, big & bold titles, however they do not have a convention or form which I feel I have managed to develop, which is the introduction of my banner and logo. Down the left hand side you can see my black and red banner, one of the advantages from the way I have developed this is that if I change my form of ‘house colours’ in a different edition, I am able to implement these colours in both my banner and logo which then allows me to conform.

Finally I have challenged forms & conventions in my magazine by taking other forms & conventions which have been used by the major magazines and implemented it into my front cover but with my own style, take for example my large image – most magazines which have a feature article on an artist will have a large image of them on the front cover, and from my magazine you can see this, however what I have also done is cover my layer white, and then erased the white to give the grey background a loose appearance like a shadow. The idea is to show that the artist has come from the light with the white surrounds but also has  a grey effective shadow showing that he still has his ‘Grimey’ personality about him.

Conclusion – Forms & Conventions

After reviewing three popular magazines and their contents cover it now allows me to choose which forms & conventions I will be using for my contents page. Like Kerrang, my genre of music is niche, so I will perhaps go for a niche approach to my contents page – however I know already that one of the conventions is that it has to be organised, so if I find that a niche approach to my contents page proves difficult for me to also make it organised, I will then design my magazine contents page to be more conventional.

Forms & Conventions;

• Images / Photos – Articles – Logo
• Clear Headings – Captions – Quotes – Page Numbers
• Editors Letter
• Perhaps breaking into Columns – Continuous Colours (House Style) – Consistant Use of Font.

My images will be relatively small and there wont be many – I might put page numbers next to the image with either a caption or small article depending on the type of story. The editors letter will come next to my Logo / Title which will be on the top section of the contents page. The heading will have similar use of font and colours about them to give my contents page a House Style. More information will be held on the main story and the relevant page, however the story will still not be completely given away to keep it more exclusive, building up the suspense towards it.

To be certain whether to insert the use of columns or ‘sectioning it off’ I will draw several sketches in different manners to see what I feel is more appropiate to the genre and reader.

An example of how I will present articles can be demonstrated through the main story based on the covering artist ‘Leon Surrain.’ I will take the caption on the front cover ‘The Step Into Fame’ and use that as an article heading on the contents page – following this I will write in a bit more detail what the interview was about, a quote of what he said and the page the interview is on – this allows me to build up the suspense with the reader who can then skip to the exclusive story if they want to.

Contents Pages – Forms & Conventions

Before creating our magazine cover we studied the forms & conventions of various popular magazines cover – we went into extensive research to allow us to plan our covers with similar conventions mixed with our ideas. Moving onto contents pages I will be doing the same – this post will be based on studying the forms & conventions of three popular contents pages of magazines.

NME Magazine

Forms & Conventions -

We can see that NME has clearly put their trademark on the contents at the top – and that the mast head is large, with a date and the statement ‘This week’ it instantly tells you that this is what is included in our magazine in this edition.

The magazine has a band index which takes up the whole left 1/8th of the page. It states names of bands / artists who are included in the weeks edition and the page they are on – this allows the reader to just browse down to their most favourite artist / band e.g Alicia Keys, you can then just skip to the page regarding that artist.

The right hand side breaks it down into sections – it gives you a news section, which will most likely include most recent artist activity and updates on the celebrities life / performing. A radar section which basically means a section that scans all new movement in the music industry – so for example new bands up & coming, new tracks in production, things that would generally be ‘off the radar’ to the public. A reviews section which would clearly rate recent gigs, albums, singles etc etc. A live section informing the reader of the newest giggs, events taking place and such details. Finally a features section which tells the reader what the magazine also features, this would generally contain special information & details on the major features within the edition.

Finally the central section of the contents page is covered with a large image and a short story – I feel that stories which take this section would either be of importance or something extreme. At the bottom of the central section NME has conducted some of their own marketing encouraging readers to subscribe monthly – a fantastic idea because this works out cheaper than paying for a weekly edition 4 times a month and allows NME to have more readers on board, inclining more people to take part in the sales of the NME magazine.

Q Magazine

Forms & Conventions -

Again similar to NME they have clearly put their trademark on the magazine – it takes up a large part of the top section, with the clear statement ‘contents’ again instantly telling the reader that this page will break down where to find what. It has a reduced image of the magazine cover and a snippet of text to go with it explaining the meaning of the image in more detail followed by a page number for the full story.

Like every contents page it contains page numbers – showing the reader what page certain information on, this is usually done with the top stories – this is because the magazine understands that the reader will be eager to read these major stories and will often want to cut right to that page, it can often be that the reader will buy the magazine based on it’s exclusive stories and with this the reader will want to get to it as quickly as possible.

Kerrang Magazine

As we already know Kerrang has a very unique style brought from it’s genre. However this is not applied so much due to the way they have to present a contents page and again like the previous magazines it clearly states ‘Contents’ and is much more organized than the front cover. Unlike the previous two contents pages Kerrang has inserted an editors letter in his words. The magazine has used the right side to list what information is on what pages, under headings like NME such as Feedback, News, Live Reviews, Features, K! Icons, Album Reviews, Gigs, Swag and Famous Last Words.

Kerrang exercises a large use of photos compared to the other two contents pages, which can prove to draw in the readers more to the story than words sometimes. Finally like NME, Kerrang has done their own advertising by posting how to subscribe monthly for the Kerrang magazine.

Summary

Forms -

Images / Photos – Articles – Logo – Date – Issue

Titles – Clear Headings – Sub Headings – Caption – Quotes – Page Numbers

Introductory Text – Editors Letter – Adverts to Subscribe

Thumbnail of Magazine Cover – Broken into Columns – Colour Scheme Continuous / House Style – Consistant Use of Font