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

1. Evaluation question 1.
“In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge
forms and conventions of real media products?”

2. “A magazine is a publication published either printed or electronical.
The purpose of magazines is often to bring out entertainment and
information to the ones that buy it, so that everyone working on the
magazine is paid. Magazines have certain conventions, and different
people prefer different magazines. Therefore, it is important to know
what you are working after. My magazine is an Indie-alternative
magazine, and I have done what I can to make it look like one.”

3. The magazines
1. Under The Radar
2. WOODEN (my
Magazine)
1. 2.

4. Coverpage
I am going to compare my magazine to an edition of
“Under the Radar”, one of the two magazines that I
analyzed earlier. “Under the Radar” uses the important
conventions of magazines, like the masthead, cover
lines (often in a variety of fonts), a slogan, a central
image (often featuring a person with a direct gaze),
date and barcode, and a puff/buzz.
For this music magazine, the technical codes and cover
lines relates to music. (Bon Iver vs. Ian MacKaye),
(Stephen malkmus vs. Gus Van Sant), the masthead
does not refer to music, but the magazine writes about
music you might have missed, so it is a suiting name.
The puff/buzz is also mentioning free songs, which
relates to music. (+29 free songs inside!) The symbolic
codes used are the central image of a musician (St.
Vincent), but the colours of the magazine refers to the
VALS of the musician, and not the genre or magazine in
general.

5. Coverpage
My magazine uses the same conventions, but the
layout is different. My cover lines relate to music, (The
struggle of being happy: Mitski talks ‘Puberty 2’) I
mention musicians and albums (Daughter / Not to
disappear), and the central image portraits a ‘famous’
musician. Like “Under the Radar”, I based the colours of
the magazine on the musicians VALS, but if I were to
make more magazines, I would not change the colour
of the masthead. The artist on my magazine is not
holding a direct gaze, because it would not fit the
personality of the artist.
As I said, the layout is different, because I wanted to
make something that was more interesting to look at,
and therefore, it would attract audience. Specifically
the fact that I have framed some of the cover lines,
makes it more interesting.

6. Contentspage
The main conventions of a contents page is a clear title
that indicates it is a contents page, a list of stories with
folios, sections, Images, (often more than one)
acknowledgements and a design identity with the rest
of the magazine. Other conventions that are not too
important are the flannel panel, folios on images,
website address and social media logos.

7. Contentspage
The most important thing that signifies
it is a Music magazine is the
instrument. A guitar works well for an
indie magazine, because most people
would connote the guitar with slow
music, acoustic or old. Therefore, a
normal guitar would not suggest pop,
unlike elements such as a speaker or a
mixing board. My contents page has a
clear title, it has a design identity with
the rest of the magazine, and stories
with folios. The fonts I have used are
grotesque, same as on the “Under the
Radar” contents page. My main image
is also connected to a folio, because
the folio is orange, unlike the others,
which are written in black. At the
bottom, I have placed social media
names and a website link. There is
nothing on my contents page that
challenge conventions

8. DPS
This dps might not have been the
best one to analyse in the
magazine, because it does not
connect to the artist on the cover
or the contents page. The layout
is very different from my
magazine, but the conventions
are mostly the same.

9. DPS
I did not use 3 conventions that can be
considered important. One of them was drop
caps, because I did not find it necessary, and it
would ruin the symmetry. The second one is a
subheading that tells the reader what section
they were in, because the title is so bit that it is
self-explanatory. The third is that my dps does
not have a large, main image, but rather two
small ones. I did not think it would be
necessary to make them bigger, because there
is already a very big image of the artist on the
contents page.
I have placed a pull quote in the middle of one
of the pages, and used it as an introduction to
the text. Another important convention I have
added is the large title, which I made extra-
large and interesting, because I think it is one
of the most important elements on the page.
The most important convention might be the
page number, because without it, it would be
almost impossible to navigate. The last
convention I used was that I parted the text
into columns. I think this is very important,
because most people would expect to see that
in a magazine, as it is a big part of the esthetics.