Forms and Conventions Evaluation

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

My main focus of the genre in my magazine is based towards electronic music, which would come under electro music. The conventions of having a very technological edgy feel to it, gives it that sort of underground party feel to it the mix of bright and dark colours mixed together gives it that feel of lights in a club which would usually be in a dark setting. DJMAG (picture attached on the bottom) is a good example of a magazine I analysed in my own time to try and incorporate some ideas, which really showed me some good ideas to think about using in my own magazine. I wouldn’t say it filled a gap in the market but it’s definitely an area of the market which isn’t looked into very much or read about, probably because the lack of choice there is and the ROCK magazines which overrule the market quite dominantly. I stuck quite close to the conventions so that it wouldn’t become too much of a problem when it came down to the final product, such as not having the right image, thus leaving it quite empty looking or even confusing. The name FADE-IN comes from the technique of a DJ fading in and out tracks which helps tie in with the genre of music. The front page colour scheme has a dark image which would indicate having a club feel to it, as you can not see a DJ’s face and makes it seem more underground, the bright colours would go with the lights that would be in the club and the edgy font slants show a quirky image setting a “roughed up” look. On the double page spread, it has the same setting as before with the dark and light colours mixed together, in the text there are pull quotes which are put in a different font colour to help it stand out from the rest of the text, the imagery colour is set to an orange lighting to help blend in with the rest of the page so that there is not too many different colours on the page, the gig guide has a glowing effect on it so that even when it’s a small part of the page it still stands out on the page, the yellow danger sign with the font writing was a hard graphic to create successfully especially with the colour choice, so, it was given a roughed up look to blend in some of the black background to help the font stand out. The contents page has only 3 basic colours of red, white and black, which again contrast the bright and dark colour look which is sustained through the magazine. The subtitle headings have a funky glow coming from them with and edgy graphitti look. Over the magazine I tried to keep all headings (mastheads and subtitles) bold, with the colours and glows so that they caught the eye well, rather than having a dark single coloured magazine.