In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge

forms and conventions of real media products?

Dani Gordon

Cover- conventions used • A convention I noticed in wonderland magazine was a black block above the image

that the text was placed in. This is a convention I used in my final product as I feel it really made the magazine name stand out and catch the reader attention. I really like how this turned out on my product as I feel its really eye catching, the black box behind the text was something I used on my contents as well as I feel it worked so well

Cover- conventions used • Another convention I used was one I saw in the Zooey Deschanel issue of Dazed

and Confused, in which all the text was written down the left hand side of the page. This reminded me of the spine of a CD case and I feel this would work really well in a music magazine as it resembled a CD case. I like how this turned out on my final product as I believe it catches the readers attention as its different to what you would normally expect

Cover- conventions developed A convention I developed was the minimalistic nature of the covers I researched. I’m really fond of minimalistic magazine covers as I feel they look far nicer than cluttered, text heavy covers. I feel minimalistic covers look contemporary so therefore would make a new music magazine stand out rather than blending in with all other music magazines. For this reason I made my cover very minimalistic only including 2 sections of text. I lot of the magazines I look at had one or two paragraphs of text on the cover, I developed this convention by having individual words and one sentence as I preferred how this looked in comparison to paragraphs

Cover- conventions challenged • The majority of music magazines I looked at were very cluttered and text heavy

this was a convention I really didn’t want to use as I didn’t like how it looked. Therefore a text heavy cover was a convention of a music magazine that I challenged. I understand that magazines use a large amount of text on the cover to entice people in, but I really don’t think it looks good, I feel that it can lead to the reader getting distracted as there is so much to look at. I’d rather have my cover be minimalist to allow the reader to focus on one section at a time. Although I challenged a key convention of a music magazine I feel I’m able to justify it as I also looked at music magazine with minimalist covers and I they draw in audiences just as well as text heavy covers

Cover- conventions challenged • Having a mid to close up was one of the first conventions I challenged when

creating my media product. I felt this was too much of a generic convention for a music magazine. For this reason I decided on a long shot for my final piece. I did create a cover using a close up, but after gaining audience feedback I decided to use a long shot instead. I found an issue of Billboard magazine that use a long shot, therefore I believe the image I used was acceptable as also I challenged a convention it also conformed to one

Contents- conventions used One of the main conventions I used was the use of heading to break up the information on the contents page. I felt this was an extremely useful way to help readers navigate through my magazine. I feel that often a reader wouldn’t be interested in every inch of the magazine, therefore the headings would make it easier for them to find the section they're looking for. I split my headings in to ‘feature’ ‘announcements’ and ‘monthly’ as I feel they were appropriate enough to cover everything I wanted to include

Contents page - conventions used• When researching contents pages I noticed that inclusion of multiple images was

something that came up again and again. Therefore this was a convention I wanted to make sure I followed as I felt the use of images broke up the text and made it aesthetically pleasing for the reader. The use of images on the contents page also added colour to the page. My colour scheme was black and white, therefore including pictures was important. Even though the clothes my models are wearing aren't overly bright I still feel it brings colour to the page. When researching I noticed that NME used a lot of pictures and that was something I wanted to replicate, even though I didn’t use as many pictures.

Contents page – conventions developed

• Again when looking at NME I noticed that they have a pull quote for every article. This was a convention I wanted to use, but I didn’t want to do it on every article so I developed this contention. I felt that pull quotes are a really good way of drawing a reader attention to one particular article. For that reason I included three pull quotes on my contents page, I placed them underneath the images of the artists and followed them up with a brief summary about the article. The idea for which I got from NME

DPS- conventions used • The double page spreads that I looked at used introductions at the beginning of

the article. This was a convention I decided to use when creating my final product, as I felt it would help to draw the readers in as it allowed them an insight in to the article before reading the whole thing. I followed the same lines as the introductions I saw during my research. I introduced the artist as well as giving information on the background of the artist. I felt this was important as it was an effective way to quickly tell the reader about the artist if they haven't already heard of them, as well as the previously mentioned fact that it helps to draw the reader in

DPS- conventions developed • Another convention I used was the use of pull quotes. I decided to use these as

again I felt it was a good way to catch the readers attention and draw them in. Although this was a convention I used, I fell I developed this convention from what you would normally expect to see. On the magazines I looked at the pull quote was large, in some ways looked like a title. I didn’t want this as I simply wanted the artists name as the title. For this reason I placed the pull quote inside the text. This therefore broke up the text and I personally feel made the article look less daunting. Overall I used a pull quote as I think it’s a really simple way to catch the eye of reader as it stands out from the rest of the text as it is slightly bigger.

DPS- convention challenged • The majority of double page spreads I researched included one single image,

usually placed on the left hand side. Personally I dislike how this looks, I think it looks dull and doesn’t really catch the eye of the reader. For this reason I didn’t follow this convention when producing my final piece. I included 12 pictures on my double page spread. I took my inspiration for this from the Zooey Deschanel issue of Allure magazine, even though Allure isn’t a music magazine I still took inspiration from it. I thought the pictures expressions in the pictures and how they were laid out were really interesting and immediately caught my eye, this is the reason why I mimicked it when creating my final product. I did also create a single image double page spread, which I asked audience feedback on. The feedback I received from my target audience was far more positive about the multi image page, so that is the one I used. As not only did I prefer it, but it met the needs of my target audience