Question 1.

1. In what way does your media product, use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? The title of my magazine, May Contain Noise (MCN), generically follows the stereotypical conventions of professional media products due to its use of three initials forming its name. This is a technique, which from my research; I found which is used popularly in this industry. It is used on one of the most successful magazines of this genre which is NME. With NME being so popular I took inspiration from its name and formed mine. However, mine is something unique and something which I feel brings a brand identity which both states the intention of the magazine confidently to the audience, and also represents the content’s genre. The front cover of my magazine uses a dominating image of a male who is dressed in a retro but sheik style. This combined with his hair style and angle to the camera, shows that my magazine is aiming to produce a different look on the music industry and is going to involve much more intellectual, yet entertaining information. This is something which I believe is contemporary and unconventional to current products in this market and would give my product a competitive edge. Something which was also important in the selection of my layout, was constructing my structure around the central image. This draws attention to the image, and from my previous research, I had found that this is something which is done throughout most music magazines. The reason that I feel that this is a successful technique is due to the fact that it extenuates the central image and adds to it’s poignancy on the shelf. The reason why this is important is because my magazine would be new to a very competitive market, so do something drastically different to the conventional style could mean that my magazine would be unsuccessful and this is why I followed the standard conventions here. My double page spreads follow fairly standard layouts and structures inspired by a variety of similar magazines but predominantly NME’s double page spreads. However, I decided to carry my spread onto two pages and continued the colour scheme of purple which I had not seen in many of magazines so this challenges the stereotypical styles. Finally, my contents page is structured with fairly standard layouts and I continued the colour scheme from the front cover of red white and black to add to the continuity of the magazines style.