Genre research

Prior to engaging in the production of my product I decided to conduct some further research into the conventions of sports/football magazines.  In the magazines that I looked at to find conventions I noticed that in terms of content there will be many articles that interview professional and popular players, reviews on matches, and sporting equipment used in football and other general news within the sport.  In terms of colours the products that I looked to gain conventions from, football magazines, they are generally very colourful and have usually a colour pallet of 5 colours that include the colours of football kits and that can be associated with football. So this means that lots of reds, blues, yellows, blacks and whites are used. As these are common colours. As well as this, you would typically see lots of greens because of the pitch used in football. The use of colour is also used because of the lower age range of the target audience. The layout of this genre is usually quite chaotic and there isn’t too much order to the layout. This is because football fans aren’t associated with being organised and tidy so this will represent them. In terms of mastheads they are often 1/8 of the page and are bold fonts, this is to attract the attention of the target audience so that they can recognise their magazines and pick them up.  The images include are mainly action shots of players doing the sport, but you also see shots of the players, pundits and other famous people associated with the sport in shots that are modeled and often accompany an article. The lexis that is commonly used is usually simplistic and easy to understand because this is what football fans want as they aren’t looking for an extensive read, but something that tells them the information about their sport as simply as possible. Now that I have researched and understand the common conventions of a football magazine I can now use these in my product and rival other magazines that are on the market.  I did this research because as Bentley said in 1997, “rearranging the old to create the new.” Is the best way to rival other companies and impress your target audience because they are already used to seeing their desired product in a certain way.