Describe how your analysis of the conventions of real media texts informed your own creative media practice. Refer to a range of examples in your answer to show how these skills developed over time’.

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                           My foundation portfolio consisted of a music magazine, before I started creating this product I researched many existing products that are on the market. This included magazines such as KERRANG! NME and Q magazine. I found many conventions and decided that some I would carry out and some I would break. For the article, I used a standard convention of the mode of address, as the typical mode of address is quite informal and directly speaks o the reader. I did this by using informal colloquial language like ‘the shows were mental!’ This is very common with my chosen genre as rock bands usually get quoted saying loud, exciting things, this is to address and relate to their younger fan base.

                            The convention of a masthead was adopted by me as I felt it was vital in connecting with my audience and creating an effect brand image for my product. I chose to follow the standard form of having the name of my magazine ‘GARAGE’ span across the whole page, this makes the page look even and will make it more pleasurable for the audience to view it. I also chose a rough font that will appeal to the rock audience I have aimed my product at. The main image overlaps the masthead of my magazine, I chose to do this as it is a convention and I believe that it makes the magazine look better as it has more layers to it and gives it more depth when text and images overlap.

                            For the front cover of my magazine, I used a rule of thirds technique to fit in with a convention of real music magazines. This means having sections on the page, where the masthead is in the top third, the main image is in the middle third, and the main story is in the bottom third. This method is used so the audience can easily glance at the cover and gain the information they need quickly to decide whether they want to read the magazine. The masthead in the top would attract them especially if they are fans of the magazine, this would make it recognisable. Also, the main image will relate to fans of the particular band, along with the bottom third stating the name of the band. This is a common feature of music magazines, and products like KERRANG work on the basis of having a band on the cover each week.

                            Another convention I stuck with was the common use of cover lines on the side of the front cover of my music magazine. I found this to be very common and it is used by the majority of music magazines, it gives the reader a further insight into the contents of the magazine without actually having to open it.  However I wanted to break the conventions slightly, so instead of sticking with a set font, I changed the font depending on the band name, I think this worked well and makes the magazine cover stick out more. This quote from Ken Robinson backs my decision to try something slightly unconventional. "If you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original".

                            For my advanced portfolio, I created an ancillary Poster relating to the release of my bands album. For this, I stuck to a typical convention of an album poster by adding small reviews or quotes from other music magazines, (KERRANG! And Rock Sound). I did this to show that it is a good album, so it is a persuasive technique that is used to make the audience believe that the album is good as famous music magazines have said so.  The analysis of real texts allowed me to use this convention as I found that on pretty much all of the posters I looked at, had some sort of star rating or quote from a big media company. A lot of album posters feature an image of the band or of the album cover itself, I went against this and used the same image as the album cover but in a slightly different way, I think this is because I have learned throughout the course that I can choose between conventions and I now know which ones would be best to stick to and which ones I can risk to break, which may make my product more unique and successful.