M3: Genre, Codes and conventions

       Codes and Conventions of a Magazine

For this report, I will be writing about the code and conventions of industry magazines. I will explain how my It's All About Sheldon Cooper TV magazine, including my assets, follows the unwritten rules of magazines and their layouts. The repetition and difference genre theory by Steve Neale (1988): Genres must all contain some instances of repetition and some instances of difference, difference is essential to the economy of the genre. To relate to this theory, I am following conventions of TV magazines that are already out there (which is the repetition/similarities), but I am creating the magazine on the character Sheldon Cooper from The Big Bang Theory which hasn't been done before (this is the difference).

 

 

 This is my masthead for my Sheldon Cooper TV magazine. A masthead is the brand name of my magazine, TV Fanatics. I decided to use this name because it clearly states the genre of my magazine, this is a TV magazine. I have used Adobe Illustrator to create this masthead and I have designed it to look like a glitched TV. I did this because a TV fits with the genre of my magazine, the colours I have used for the glitch effect I created are the colours of different t-shirts Sheldon Cooper Wears on TBBT.

 

 

 

This is The Flash logo that I drew in Adobe Illustrator for my contents page. I created this because Sheldon Cooper's favourite superhero is The Flash so this is a little easter egg fans would understand if they know the character well.

 

This is a comic book styled speech bubble I drew in Adobe Illustrator for my double page spread. I did this to fit the style of my magazine. Sheldon Cooper loves comic books so having a quote of Sheldon's from the sitcom in the speech bubble would relate to the character.

This is a design I drew for the Sheldon Cooper double page spread in Adobe Illustrator based on a graphic on one of Sheldon's t-shirts. I did this because on certain pages, fans could find the t-shirt references as a little TBBT easter eggs.

This is my completed Sheldon Cooper magazine front cover, I have used the codes and conventions of magazines for my own. In the top left corner is my masthead which is where they usually are on TV magazines. I have included the words "Learn about Sheldon's backstory" to persuade the audience to buy the magazine. I asked my friend to model as Sheldon Cooper for my magazine, he is the main image, he is looking at the audience and the image is in the middle of the magazine front cover. My cover lines "Sheldon and his: Eccentric Quirks, Quotes, Funny Moments, Relationships with others" are on the left of the front cover, I am telling the target audience what articles are in the magazine about the TV character. This is a convention of the TV magazine genres, instead of telling the audience what movies or TV series are discussed in the magazine, I am basing this around my TBBT character. I have two puffs, one on the right of my Sheldon Cooper photo which looks like a comic book that says "Theory Exclusive Issue". I decided to keep with a comic book theme for the front cover. The other puff is at the bottom left corner and it says "Season 5 of Young Sheldon out now!", this follows the genre of TV magazines because they would advertise or talk about the new seasons of a TV show. The main cover line is "Its All About Sheldon Cooper" to clearly tell the audience what the magazine is based around. My taglines are "Now you can binge watch every episode on All 4!" Exclusive behind the scenes content inside". This is similar to what TV genres have as their taglines. One thing I haven't included on the front cover is the dateline, however I have included one on the contents page. I have also followed magazine conventions by having the barcode and price together, you can see this in the bottom right corner. I chose to use bright colours because that is a convention of TV magazines.

I used this Supernatural TV magazine front cover as inspiration for mine. I have created a very similar layout to this magazine cover. As you can see the TV guide masthead is in the top left corner and it is covered by the main image so I did the same. They have used Italics for some important words, they have used different colours to make the words stand out as well so I chose to use italics and use the colour red for this. I have followed the TV genre conventions here as you can compare my magazine cover to this one and see lots of similarities in layout and text ideas. I used exclusive behind the scenes content inside for my tagline which is similar to the "plus interviews with Jared, Jensen and Misha" which you can see on this Supernatural TV magazine.

Here is my Sheldon Cooper TV magazine contents page. I have clearly followed the design of this TV magazine contents page that I used as my example, I used this as my example to help me follow the codes, conventions and genres of TV magazines. On both magazines there is: A main image on the right, there are red numbers next to the article headings that are bold and a different font to the text underneath it. They both contain many different fonts to make the contents page look interesting. There is an image near the bottom (I created a flash logo in Adobe Illustrator and placed this at the bottom where the Moana image is on this example contents page), there is a small image caption underneath the main image, on my magazine I credited my Sheldon Cooper model and said I took the photos. On both magazine covers there is a magazine issue number and the date. I have clearly been influenced by this example magazine contents page and I have used the codes and conventions of TV magazine contents pages. To fit the TV genre of my magazine, the main image is of the TV character Sheldon Cooper as the magazine is about him. The Flash logo is related to The Flash being Sheldon's favourite superhero (The Flash is also a TV show), the TV fanatics masthead is made to look like a glitched TV which relates to the TV genre of my magazine. Furthermore, the content on my magazine is linked to the Sheldon Cooper from TBBT, the Young Sheldon TV show and TBBT show. I talk about Sheldon't backstory from Young Sheldon, bloopers from TBBT TV show and about everything we know about the chatacter from these two TV shows. I have also used the Impact font and wrote the The Big Bang Theory and used the colours to make sure the audience knows I will be refering to the TV show.

Here is my Sheldon Cooper double page spread. The article I decided to write for this page is about Sheldon's quirks, quotes, funny moments and relationships with others from TBBT TV show. I have followed the codes and conventions of double page spreads and you can clearly see this this from this example DPS in a different genre. The headline/title is the largest at the top of the page. I stuck with the same colours as my contents page to keep consistancy. The title font is different to the the paragraph text, the Badaboom fonr is to capture the attention of the readers with the font style while the pargraph font I used is simple and easy to read. I have used a lead in underneath the headline to basically tell the reader what the article is about, this is smaller than the headline but bigger than the paragraph text to show the order of importance. I have used a red dropcap in the BadaBoom font to draw the audience to the start of the article and make them want to read it. You can clearly see my text has columnds; I did this when I changed from Sheldon's quirks to his relationships with others for example. My main image takes up the entire other page of Sheldon in front of a train, Sheldon loves trains so I thought this fits the subject of the DPS magazine article. You can clearly see the gutter of the magazine. I haven't placed anything there because this is the middle of the magazine where the pages crease. I have included a page number on the contents page and DPS because this is the convention of magazines, every page has a page number. I decided to add a little easter egg at the end of the article, the little illustration including the robot. This is a reference to Sheldon's t-shirt designs. Technically I have used pull quotes along the main image, these are quotes sheldon has said in comic book speech bubbles to keep a consistant comic book theme. My magazine fits the TV genre because the main image is of the character the magazine is based around from TBBT TV series, the article talks about the TV character and I have used quotes Sheldon Cooper has said from TBBT TV show.

As you can see, I have successfully followed the codes and conventions of a magazine front cover, contents page and double page spread; I have also successfully related to the TV genre of my magazine throughout.