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

real media products?

Before starting to create our media product we looked at previous years magazines and had a discussion on what we thought was good about them and was wasn’t so good. By discussing this we could see why some magazines were better than others. For the front cover this came down to things such as the framing of the main image, the placing of the anchorage, the choice of colours and not having the page cluttered and hard to read. For the contents page things such as the layout of the categories (if chosen to use categories), staying with the brand identity introduced on the front page so the pages look like they belong together and the choice of imagery and its framing. Finally for the article the sizing of images and how the text was placed were both big factors to how professional the page looked. When coming to designing my magazine I took into account these conventions and attempted to stick with them as they have made so many magazines successful as they are pleasing for their audiences to look at, but in some cases I did challenge these conventions as I like to stick out from the crowd to stop my magazine looking like another mainstream sheep with no imagination.

For my front cover I came into a problem straight away with finding a text I thought suited the Hip Hop genre whilst also looking professional at the same time. The font I eventually chose was Lao UI as I thought it looked sharp and professional as well as fitting the Hip Hop genre. One main convention of music magazines and practically any magazine for that matter is the masthead being the biggest text on the page and in the top left, I chose to stick with this convention as well as developing it by introducing a red box around the text which brought the masthead out even more as it was the brightest part of my page, I chose to do this as I it separates the masthead from the anchorage surrounding it so the two are not mixed up. I chose to also make the main article stand out by again putting a box around it this time in black which separates the article from the anchorage surrounding it. I chose to have my anchorage surround my model by having it fit around him and kind of fit together like a jigsaw puzzle. I am really pleased with this decision and it is my favourite part of my magazine. I think it gives the magazine a professional, stylish and clean cut look. Overall for my front cover I think I kept strictly to conventions, as that’s what I thought suited my magazine for that page.

The contents page was a very different story, traditionally contents page’ are laid out in different categories so you can see what types of articles there are to read instantly I chose to challenge this convention by only including a features column down the right side of my page with all the articles that were featured on my front cover with a brief explanation of what to expect from the article. I chose to do this as when I was researching I came across how Vibe came about doing their contents page which is very similar to the way I have done mine with the main article image on the left and a features column down the right. Overall I really like the way my contents page came out in the end and the choice of conventions I used on it.

My double page spread was kept simple and clean, I did this by having the text on the right and one large image on the left. This is a typical layout for a magazine article and it was one that I liked and thought suited my magazine. A big convention of a magazine article is having a quote situated within the text in a larger font, I decided to stick with this convention as I think it is one that looks very professional and also draws the reader into the article. Overall the conventions I used for my article were very basic but I believe they suited my page and made it look very professional.