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

real media products?

What elements make up a magazine?

• Page Numbers• Photographs• Cover lines• Articles (writing style)• Font• Pull Quotes• Colour scheme • Bar code• Masthead• Layout

All magazines need certain elements to make them, these are the things I have listed to the left.

Although each type/genre of magazine has a different style, for example all rock magazines have similar styles of fonts for the masthead and a red, black and white colour scheme.

These things to the left will always be featured in a magazine, and I am going to explain why I have chosen to style these features in this way in my magazine and why it fits or not fits the conventions.

Mast head style… This is my mast head, it had gone against the

conventions of the other two mastheads, as the others are block letters and the font I used is more ‘diffused’. Although all together they are all simple curved designed that aren’t too complex or intricate.

These mast heads are quite simple, they have gone for a curved and minimal effect. They both have circles in them, perhaps representing a vinyl for the decks, I think this is really clever idea, to characterize the genre in every possible way. All fonts are different styles, it is just about getting a certain style grounded them people will recognise it and associate it with your product.

Overall, all the mastheads seem to differ, as all the magazines want to have their ‘unique’ font for people to memorise and link with their product. Although there are common characteristics such as diffused and hard style linking with rock and punk music and dance music seems to go for more simplistic and curved font, which I think half fits my chosen font as it is curved but then also goes against the conventions with the diffused style.

Coverlines…• I found that there is not one certain style for the

cover lines, they tend to differ with the style of each cover or the font for a specific artist, such as the Calvin Harris font above, if the artist that is featured has a specific font for their name, that will get used.

• Although the colour of the cover lines usually

links with the colour scheme and different genres of music have more common colour schemes. As you can see on the middle item the colour scheme is black, yellow and pink which I found a common colour scheme within DJ/dance music magazines and fitted the style well.

• I also found that unlike the masthead that is sometimes covered up by the image, the coverlines will always be placed on top in a clear space and easy to read. This is because the audience probably know what the masthead says, and they will not with the coverline, I have made sure not to put anything obstructing my coverlines.

Photography style(front cover)

All of these front covers feature a medium close up photo of a male DJ, which is a very common feature for electronic music magazines. (The cover of my magazine below isn’t the finished copy, just being used for photograph) I have kept to the simple design that is used by my magazine style, as I felt this is most effective. My music genre tends to consist of one male, sometimes female (the DJ) and doesn’t usually involve a group of people like a band. Therefore I have chosen to keep to this style and use one male (posing as a DJ), I felt that if I went against this convention it wouldn’t have given a realistic style to represent the genre truthfully.

Layout of photography…(contents)

• The layout of my contents page is similar to the one I found in Mixmag.

• Showing that the reader of this genre/sort of magazine prefers a simplicity effect and as I found out earlier the common readers for this sort of magazine, they are mostly interested in the content of the magazine rather than the appearance.

• This contrasts the difference between a magazine layout style for something such as a pop or fashion magazine which has a lot going on and overlaps of photos, such as the one in the middle above, which is very busy and in your face.

My Mag,Wired

SmashHits

Mixmag

Writing style• In both of these extracts from the

interviews they both have a casual writing style. They both make the interview more of a conversation than a formal interview.

• The language style used is more of a friend talk such as in the Mixmag extract it quotes ‘shake my bum’ which gives off more of a humorous and informal effect. In the extract from my interview it quotes ‘everyone at Wired is buzzing’, which uses slang to give off a friendly effect.

• In my plan I wrote that I will make my interview more conversational than formal because I found in my style of magazine the informal style fitted it best. I have stuck to this plan as you can see from the clip at the top right, I think this style is best because it targets the age and type of audience I am targeting.

A snippet taken from an interview in Mixmag

A clip taken from my interview on my dps

Colour scheme • http://brigitgunton.blogspot.com/#!/2012/01/where-my-inspiration-came-f

rom.html

• This link displays what I made before the creation of my magazine, where I have planned my colour scheme accordingly to the genre of music I have picked and the colours that are most commonly found.

• I have kept to this plan, as you can see from the image below, although its not finished picture, the colours that have already been done are the colours that I planned. My idea was to keep to the style of my music genre, which is I found in my research is black, white and one or two bright colours such as pink and yellow. This is because these colours give off the feel of a club and dance music and represents this contrast of light and dark.

Fitting to conventions or not?• Some of my magazine fitted to the conventions exactly such as the style of image on the

front cover, a plain medium close up picture of a male DJ with eyes focused on the camera. I also felt it was important to keep the writing style fitted to the genre, a very formal interview would have stood out to be strange for the style of magazine I have chosen. Although breaking the conventions is sometimes good, such as trying a different style of photography or writing, but in this case it wouldn’t have fitted.

• I challenged the conventions with minor elements such as the masthead being different to the ones on existing products, in the fact that my font was diffused and the colour is black which is usually a common characteristic in rock magazines, but in this case it fitted the style of a electronic dance music magazine. Also the name of the main person featured in my magazine was definitely a lot larger (almost equal to the masthead) which I found wasn’t the same on the other magazine front covers.

Photography Similar.... MastheadNot soSimilar...