This document summarizes how the student's media product uses and develops conventions from real magazines while also challenging some conventions. The student included typical magazine elements like photography, fonts, cover lines, and barcodes in a similar style to real magazines, but made some small changes, like having the cover photo subject look to the side rather than making eye contact. The student aimed to balance following conventions with originality to create a credible magazine-style product.

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop and challenge forms of a real media product?

2. To make up a magazine, you need to have the following elements: •Photography •Text •Fonts •Colour Scheme •Cover Lines •Price •Barcode •Masthead •Contents Page •Page Numbers •Front Cover •Date •Issue Number EACH OF THESE ELEMENTS EITHER FOLLOW OR CHALLENGE CONVENTIONS OF EXISTING MAGAZINES.

3. WRITING STYLE Here is a link to my writing style analysis. Taken from DJ Mag http://beckymediastudies.blogspot.com/2010/12/writing-style-analysis.html Speech features such as “like” and “I mean” have been used throughout my main article. When the article is read in a conversational manor, the reader might feel more relaxed. This language choice is fairly typical of music magazines within my specific genre. An article from DJ Mag uses the phrase “sort of” which is considered fairly informal. Taken from my DPS To contrast this, I have used correct grammar and standard spelling throughout. I feel this is important in a magazine as it still needs to show a level of intelligence and authority. All music magazines, regardless of genre, use this type of language consistently throughout. Magazines need to find a balance between conversational language and informative, formal language.

4. PHOTOGRAPHY From left to right; my final front cover, Mixmag front cover and DJ Mag front cover. As you can see, the photography used on my front cover is not dramatically different from the type used on other magazines. I have followed the idea of having the focus on the artist. This is achieved by the artist(s) being the only visible figure(s) of the frame. They take up 80% of the cover and tend to be looking straight down the camera. This eye contact enables the reader to feel engaged with the artist. However, for my photography, I have slightly altered this. I have still got the one main artist in the centre of the page, but I have not made the eye contact seen so commonly in magazines. By doing this, I have broken the standard ways, but not so much that it’s the other end of the spectrum. There are still clear visible similarities between both mine and already published magazines.

5. FONTS All taken from Mixmag front covers All taken from my front cover Electronic dance music has many sub-genres stemming from it. Dubstep is regarded as one of them. Electronic equipment is very common amongst these genres, so specific fonts are used in magazines which specialise in this. Above on the left are fonts extracted from the front cover of 3 different Mixmag magazines. The fonts have connotations with digitalism, technology and electronics. I have done the same with my magazine and the conventions are followed.

6. CONTENTS PAGE Unlike a book, the contents page of music magazines rarely list the features on every single page. The numbers read in chronological order, but not every single page number is present. Only the main features will be highlighted by having a cover line on the contents page. I have done this on my contents page too. Therefore, I have not disputed the typical conventions. Contents page taken from DJ Mag Contents page of my final product

7. DOUBLE PAGE SPREAD I feel that my DPS bares similarities to other published media products. This is because I have made use of page numbers, appropriate sized photographs and columns amongst others. In most cases, I have simply taken inspiration from existing magazines and, in essence, copied them to aid the credibility of my own product. With aspects like the photography, I have used the common idea of filling one page with a picture. However, the image is not as typical as one would expect. The featured character is only visible from one side of their face. This shows that I have taken into consideration the layout of my photography, but I have played with the typically assumed standards of the content of the photograph.

8. OTHERS Little additions such as the barcode, issue number, page numbers and date were all added to my magazine to make sure that it looked more like a real media product. I positioned these in the similar manor and style that any music magazine would do regardless of genre. Because of this, I haven’t challenged the conventions, but just mirrored and developed them slightly. Barcode on my magazine Barcode on a magazine from the complete opposite genre Barcode on a magazine from a very similar genre