1) In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and

conventions of real media products?

After looking through the less mainstream magazines that fell within the genres
of Hip Hop, Funk and Jazz such as Wax Poetics or Bonafide, there were several
different elements which I chose to incorporate into my own magazine. For the
fonts however I decided to use quite atypical styles as a pose to the more
frequently used fonts which all maintain the same kind of basic, block styled
letters which is both true for mastheads and all the fonts to follow within the
magazine. For example the font used in the masthead is Luminari and is more
alike some of the mainstream magazines style of fonts, for example rolling
stone, as it is a slightly more gothic style and has been made to look as though it
contains a three dimensional quality. However the element which maintains the
conventions from the magazines intended style is that it is not bound to one
colour and is meant to follow the changing colour scheme of each magazine so
for instance my product follows a pale yellow with mixes of greys, whites and
blacks throughout hence the yellow masthead. Its creation was quite basic with
only a few minor tweaks to the amount of visibility on the three dimensional
aspects of each letter, the slightly embedded look it has and the letters being
spaced apart at a much greater rate than what is commonly used in magazine
mastheads in general. There is no logo included as the masthead only consists of
three letters so in essence the masthead itself was intended to be both a logo
and masthead. However the photo edit on the cover page is what takes
advantage of the capabilities that Photoshop has to offer as it is a multi layered
edit in which the photo is changed to a greyscale version of the original and the
levels of contrast and sharpness are changed in a way to accentuate the most
important parts such as the head, hat and scarf of the model. After this the layer
on top is created where a select area is shaded with the pale yellow included in
the masthead where the saturation is increased to give a more radiant version of
the colour so that finally the yellow mixes with the white sections of the photo
underneath in a way that it fills it with a sort of washed, rugged effect to contrast
against the model to draw attention. This is done by simply changing the opacity
level of the overlying layer and then switching its mode from normal to a
darkened colour translucency.
My contents page follows a similar style in that the photo edit is the main appeal
of the page. However text does not take such a back seat on this page. This time
the aim for the photo was similar to the cover pages where the edit features
multiple layers only this time when making the original image into a greyscale
version, the whites were completely removed from the model so that there were
only shades of grey left, just with a large range. The prop is at the lighter end of
the scale in grey and is then selected and shaded in a paler yellow with an
almost iridescent effect on the areas affected more so by the light in the original
image. Once this is done, the layer again is changed in terms of its opacity and
then changed to a darkened colour mode in order to obtain the translucency
desired to effectively merge the layers. Next the model is then erased with a
different type of eraser to create the effect that they are fading away into the
background colour of the page which is just slightly darker than the darkest grey
featured in the image. As far as text goes in the contents page it switches
between black and white, with opposite outlines just slightly visible around the
edges of the letters with a separate, complementary font for the number

references for each article referenced on the page, with a slightly calligraphic
style. This is again uncommon of the style of magazine I was intending but the
actual article summaries themselves remain in line with typical conventions as
they are more inclined to an audience that could be considered esoteric in their
choice in articles and music taste in the first place. But the image still remains
the most poignant aspect of the page despite its unconventional style in terms of
the genre it falls under.
Finally the double page spread once more is centred on a heavily edited image
like the contents and cover page; however this is more of a common theme
amongst the magazines that target the audience of which my own does. For
example, Bonafide magazine is known for its double page spread image focus
with it normally spanning both pages and the entirety of one without any
overlapping text. I decided to conform to this convention and have it span across
both pages with a washed effect to retract from it being an exact stylistic mimic
and also to better suit the style and attitude formed in my own magazine as
opposed to it being an exact product of genre expectations.