I feel as though my media product has gone against 'normal' conventions, this is because I have included fonts and styles that are not commonly seen in music magazines that are traditionally on the market today. The font I used for the masthead of my magazine was called 'Never Let Go' from 1001Fonts.com; this was a font that I think was more inspired by the likes of Oh Comely magazine which is a lifestyle magazine that includes both this kind of layout and also this style of font. I have never seen a indie/alternative magazine on the retail market that uses a 'swirly' font on the cover. I have seen throughout my research that they traditionally use a thick, bold font on the masthead to really get across the dramatic nature of indie and alternative music and the boldness of the music that they are representing. What I wanted to do however was to push those conventions and do something that I certainly haven't seen on the market before. This choice of doing a more 'swirly' font on the cover was a creative decision by me as I was not really inspired by anything (I had used a bolder font on my first draft) and I just thought that with the new pictures I had taken that this style of font was the best decision I could make because of the fact that both the image and the font really compliment each other and they both represent the individuality of the genre very well. Also I feel as though this font fits in well with the black and white theme of the image on the cover as they are both quite serious and 'stylistic' and that is what I wanted to accomplish with my magazine.
Also the actual name of my magazine, 'Iconoclast', is very different to anything that I have seen on the market and I am very pleased with the originality of the name as I feel as though it speaks to my market because of the rebellious nature behind the word. Even though it is quite a long name for a magazine, it is not that short or catchy such as Clash; however I am in this case taking inspiration from Dazed and Confused and Wonderland magazine because they also have reasonably long names for their magazines and they look at pretty much the same things as my magazine does so they are pretty much on par with one another. However in saying this I find that my magazine name is still catchy and memorable for readers to purchase it again.
The layout of my magazine is something that I really payed attention to the most. I have a very critical eye on my work and I was able to criticise my work to the point that I can see every flaw with it and I was aware of how I was styling my magazine. I tried to keep the layout fairly minimalistic because when looking at magazines such as Clash and The Wire, I found that they didn't really exaggerate the layout too much and I feel as though this is something that I have done to conform to conventions of real magazine publications. I thought that by just keeping everything very simple and just using three fonts as well throughout the magazine has helped to really make sure that this magazine is exactly what I wanted, a magazine that is stylish and upmarket whilst keeping a very quirky and imaginative tone to it. I hope that by deciding to do this and not have the layout and background as busy as magazines such as NME that I have been able to make myself and my magazine come across as credible and influential members of the magazine community.
Next the use of costumes and camera work has also been something that I am looking at because I feel as though they are good representations of how well the magazine fits into society because of the fact that within my target market I have seen many images and clothing styles that really do represent what I am trying to get across. In magazines such as Clash I have seen many inspirational images (with both clothing and camera work) that have given me ideas of how I want my final magazine to turn out. Also a major part of my inspiration has been Rankin, the photographer, his images that he has produced have given me ideas of how to reach my audience. His pictures as well are very different and unique and I have took this into consideration and have known that my audience would appreciate good quality and quirky images. When looking into which magazines I found the most inspirational I was looking at mainly Clash and The Wire, both of these magazines were able to showcase their diversity with images and their different styles of images (especially Clash) and this inspired me. However that is not something I really incorporated into my own magazine because I wanted all the images to be very similar, just including different poses and styles within the magazine.
Another thing I had incorporated into my magazine was i-D Magazine's tagline "The.........Issue" because I felt as though this was a really interesting feature to include because it really adds a mystery and just 'something else' to the page. I included the tagline on my magazine 'The Psychedelic Issue', this is because I though that it really showed the readership what my magazine was about and what would be covered in the magazine. I am a big fan of psychedelia as it is so if I was catering my magazine to myself then it would really intrigue me and make me buy the magazine.
Another convention I decided to challenge was having different artists on my contents page. I kept it the same all the way through. This again was a creative decision that I decided to make because of the fact I thought that the images that I had chosen and taken were images that I was really proud of and I wanted to showcase that photography, as well as showcasing the artist that I was promoting. In my magazine they were a new band that were getting a lot of public attention, or at least starting to. Therefore I wanted to show them off and use them in all aspects of my magazine because of the fact that they were integral to the main story in my magazine.
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