1 in what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
For my AS project I have been asked to create a music magazine which goes in line with a chosen genre, a front cover, contents page and double page spread. My music magazine follows most conventions found in Hip Hop magazines, I know this as I have carried out research on numerous styles of hip hop magazines. I have mainly been looking at hip hop magazines such as XXL and Vibe. I mainly focused on XXL down to the fact it is solely hip hop and is always up to date with its stories.
When researching similar magazines, I found this front cover. I wanted to use this convention of simplicity in the layout of my magazine. Like the magazine above it is a simplistic layout to it. One of my conventions to my music magazine was its masthead for the front cover. I already knew that it had to be eye catching to readers. I wanted a masthead that would be clear to read but also have an edge about it. I noticed in my research I gathered, there is a high frequency of front covers with the colours red, white and some parts black mainly for text however. As you can see from the front cover above there is not a lot of text in this issue of XXL, I wanted to challenge this because also I didn’t want to have too much text as it would look boring for readers. Another way in which my media product uses conventions found in real media products would be the font used for my main front cover. I carried a fair bit of research on this area because it would be the first thing a reader would read and notice is the font, I wanted it to be clear to read. I used this idea for my front cover using an Adobe styled font.
When producing my Contents page I kept it to the normal. I didn’t want to do something random that would not work. I wanted to keep it simple but still keeping a professional edge to it as well. I wanted to keep the same conventions as found in industry standard music magazines. I realised they use a lot of images to advertise stories within the magazine. They will include usually 4 or 5 images including the main image which is usually linking with the main image as it is the most important one. When carrying out my research of magazines I found the majority of contents pages just stick with the original title of `Contents`. I decided to use this also as I believe it is the best option sticking with the other magazines. It is clear what page it is being Contents so there would be no confusion when looking at the page.
Above is a contents page from a Vibe magazine. I researched into vibe magazines as they are different to the usual contents page. I liked how they had laid out their mast head and split it into three lines. This is an effective way to make the masthead stand out to the readers. For my contents page I wanted to challenge this convention as it was easily read so I researched into styles of fonts for my masthead, I finally had five ideas for this and evaluated them all and whittled them down to one. I am happy with my final font as I believe it is effective to catching the reader’s attention.
When producing my double page spread I had a clear idea what I wanted from it. When looking at multiple double pages spreads I noticed that the majority of magazines with double page spread stories have one full page of the text, and then the second half of the pages with a main image. I looked at such magazines as Vibe as they had interesting ideas for double page spreads. For my music magazine I wanted to use this convention of a main image and then text on one side. Below is the double page spread from a Vibe magazine, it features the artist T.I.
Below is my finished Double page spread for my music magazine. I wanted to have an introduction to the interview with the group triple Three so I had an introduction on the left side as it is the first side of the double page spread that a reader would read. I am happy with this finished product as it is a clear layout. The text is of a clear standard and simple to read. I liked the layout of a white background with black text throughout it.
