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

Genre is a category of a media product, which the audience can recognize due to key elements being repeated such as layout, narrative, content ect..

My magazine is about music, so I had to use certain elements which are found in other music magazines.  These elements are things like masthead, main feature photo, main themes and topics in the magazine. The first thing I thought of was Themes. Obviously I knew what Genre my magazine was, but I had to think of what elements I would use so that the audience could easily recognize what the genre of the magazine is.

This is my front cover of the music magazine. https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgv8S_gRK7X4zi2xEpSu0cwJNMeklgS1VHkWx4xnwRnEsyv-VhZR97hQsdBVLS9YlgvVPtA3cmaAY_w3H2rHi5GlfnBe04Onxqxg-OL8Fu0AeY8irm6Q6Yx0ZMwoNSaG5dIE7cyWxPd3eqp/s1600/music+mag+front+cover.jpg
 I have looked at other music magazines to have an idea of the codes and conventions to use. The other music magazines usually have a Main headline, with a photo linked to the main feature.

I have also thought about the language I was going to use. The name of the magazine took some time to think, I wanted the audience to be able to tell what genre the magazine was by looking at the name of the magazine. The name ‘Solo Monthly’ gives the audience the idea that the magazine is about music. The text below the masthead anchors the meaning of the name of the magazine, to make it obvious what it is about. The use of images also supports the Genre of the magazine. The audience would recognize straight away the genre just by looking at the photos. This is intertextuality because the audience has seen this before In other music magazines.

When i looked back at the music magazine i researched before i started, i was checking to see if i conformed with the standard music magazine codes and conventions. https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrshT4uRlcFJZODmQx-2Z0B6LQEhKrFMd_hmfsyywx0OD8FHot0ybj1cararZQPu8uhe4OV9oDbCdBUznuU-cP6GeZZYt3QnJSHU5uqnFuAQpMig5tLeYq28Ow7Z0cceTrwHWj406Phv0T/s1600/NME+for+blog.jpg 
This is an analysis i did of the NME magazine front cover.

When i look at that magazine, i see a very large feature photo, with some text over it. when i look back at my front cover, i noticed that i have done the same thing. However, my photo isn't as large as it is on the NME front cover. My image is about half the size, but i filled up the remaining space with some text.
Also, some music magazines generally tend to stick to one large photo and thats it. But my front cover has a large photo and a smaller one, because the artist shown in the photo isn't famous enough to be easily recognised.

To summarise, I have used a selection of codes and conventions, including certain elements, for he audience to recognise the Genre of the magazine. I used things suchs as photos with people playing instruments, certain language to do with music and the content i used, such as the interview in the double page spread.