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

My media product has to use at least some conventions and forms of real media products. My product was a jazz magazine aimed at obviously a jazz enthusiast audience, but also a younger audience in an attempt to get a wider audience, so i had to portray the ideas using existing idea's to connote the fact that the magazine was music based, and my own ideas to ensure that this wider audience could be reached. Stereotypically, seen in magazines such as the WIRE and jazz times, the models on the cover are usually a older males. In an attempt to maintain this idea i also used a male model, but my model was much younger than the stereotypical models, therefore connoting my own desire to direct the magazine at a younger target audience, as well as the existing one. the models on the covers like the existing magazines, are usually in a mid close up pose, and i have replicated that, but i am a lot closer to the model, who features on the main story, and this connotes complete honesty and openness, features that are revered in society, and portray the jazz genre in a fantastic image.

I used a masthead, a model posing as to directly address the audience, also acting as a CVI, a running head and headlines on my front cover, and a black serif font on the contents page and double page spread, to ensure that the consumers again, knew this was a jazz magazine.

In magazines such as Jazz times and the wire, the layout and design of the magazine is focused around a simplistic theme, that i have attempted to replicate, in my piece. I have used all black font, and used a black and white boarder around my pages. I also, in an unorthodox way, put every photo within the magazine, in black and white, in an attempt to maintain the simplistic theme. the use of the black and white connotes that the jazz genre is honest, and not flashy and upbeat, but naturalistic and simple. By putting all my photos in black and white, i challenge some conventions from magazines, as often there is some colour in the photo's in magazines like the WIRE. my photo's also differ from those of the standard photo's in jazz magazines, as mine are taken from various angles, and taken in a wooded environment, rather than a studio, where some of the photo's from the wire and jazz times are taken.

The posture of my model on the contents page, with the behind shot, connotes thoughtfulness and simplistic, as he is surrounded by nature, this sticks to the simplistic theme of jazz again. the model looks free, and unaware of anything else.