Front Cover
Followed the conventions of XXL and other music
mags by having cover-lines and listing artists on the side with a + - however
didn’t follow the conventions of FADER and BRICK as they don’t include cover
lines – conversely, the cover –lines on this XXL mag are short (only the names
of the artist) whereas on my magazine they are quite long so I didn’t conform
to that convention in that way (looked at other magazines for that)
- Followed
the 3 colour scheme – however opted for a different use of colours and in a
different way – both xxl and fader used red in their colour scheme (FADER only
for this issue) and red is used a lot since it stands out ,especially for the
masthead, but in mine I chose the colour yellow as I felt like it displayed a
different vibe
- A skyline or something that links to the issue
(convention of most magazines + XXL – had it on FADER as well) – however on
mine because the placement of the masthead was different to XXL and Fader (both
of theirs having their masthead on the left side) and so having the skyline on
the right I had my skyline directly above my masthead like other magazines –
followed a convention of Brick as the masthead is in the centre
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Cover artist maintains direct eye-contact with
the camera – direct mode of address
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Date & Issue number – issue number + price
near barcode like XXL
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Simplistic style of front cover to link to Brick
and Fader’s simple cover’s and focus on ‘aesthetic’ but still added headlines
as to follow normal conventions
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Cover star follows the convention of the XXL and
Fader cover of wearing clothing and props that connote the genre – my cover
star is wearing 2 silver chains, big hoop earrings and has tattoos showing –
denotation of this
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Followed the convention of making the masthead
stand out – ‘highlighted the $ in my masthead like Fader highlighted the F in
theirs’
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Placed my cover star over the masthead like XXL
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Unlike how in Brick + Fader the front cover
images are taken with a close-up shot, I decided to take mine with a mid-shot
as a way to highlight the conventional props on my artists
j
Contents Page
(compared to BRICK, FADER and XXL)
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Compared to my case
studies contents pages, my contents page differed drastically – the large usage
of images and layout are some of the main challenges made to the form and
layout of my case studies
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A difference with all of them is my inclusion of
social media links, subscription information, editor’s letter and various
different images. My contents has included intertextuality, which is something
the others mainly have not (except for FADER which mentions a different form of
media platform)
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With Fader, their
contents page layout was only one side so I had already challenged that
convention of the magazine - as you can see I used a considerably larger amount
of pictures than the Fader contents – they simply use one small image of the
cover star but with mine I included images of other artists that would feature
in my magazine as well (links to the change in layout) – I chose to do this
again to emphasise the large global, and information filled aspect of my
magazine – I chose the images to represent the diversity of my magazine
visually and directly highlight this – Again with Layout, I set out the
articles differently with features and regulars being on different sides and
being my only two headers – with Fader they used more than one and the ones
that weren’t features did not have explanations, just the article names whereas
with mine I added little explanations under them all – one convention of Fader’s
contents page that I did follow was the use of a pull-quote to anchor to the
image – for two of my images I anchored them to pull quotes that I created
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They also did not have the editor’s letter on
their contents page however I chose to include it in mine
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I followed the conventions of this contents by
arranging the numbering with the title of the feature in a similar way and
included pull quotes.
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With BRICK, you can clearly see my contents page
… challenges the form and conventions of their contents. With Brick they have
no images, no pull quotes, it doesn’t necessarily link to the colour scheme
shown on the front cover and it isn’t organised into features etc., it’s just
labelled articles – these article names also do not have explanations
underneath them. BRICK’s contents page is very simplistic in nature, somewhat
fitting their front cover. With mine, I completely go against this, subverting
the entire page. My contents is the complete opposite of Brick’s, which can
clearly be seen just by looking at both.
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With XXL, my contents reinforced some of their
conventions, but then I developed it to fit my own magazine’s style. However,
there is also cases in which I have subverted from that model. In the case of
subverting, we can see that the XXL contents page only includes one image.
Although XXL technically has two contents pages due to the ‘A-Side’ – ‘B-Side’
format, all together this only leads to the inclusion of two photos. With mine
I included 4 images. Additionally, the ‘A-Side’-‘B-Side’ format of the contents
page is not executed through a double page spread , there are ads in-between
making each side a single contents page whereas with mine, the contents is
double paged. Now, with the case of conforming to the conventions, we can see
that I have followed the idea of continuing on the colour scheme of the
magazine clearly onto the contents; with XXL their colour scheme of Red, White and Black is clearly shown through the
contents making it recognisable – with mine, HU$TLE’s colour scheme of Gold,
White and Black is also clearly shown throughout the contents securing the
colour scheme with the model and brand,
anchoring it to the cover and creating a ‘house style’ just like XXL
did. With the typography, I used the same layout of having the features on one
side (or page in XXL’s case) and the regulars on the other (although it was
done in a different way on the XXL one); I also followed the trend of writing
small explanations of the article underneath the article title like XXL. I then
included small conventional features such as having the page number, issue
number/edition and website name on the contents page which wasn’t done for the
other ones.
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As you can see I
strayed quite far from the templates given to me by my case study contents
pages – I also used other contents page to create a model as I wanted mine to
not be as simplistic as the ones on my case study.
Double Page Spread (compared to BRICK, FADER and XXL)
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For my double page
spread, I decided to include two pages for it. From studying my case studies,
all 3 included a page before the actual double page spread which gave a brief insight
as to what was going to be included in the double page spread as well as gave
credits to the interviewer and had the title of the article – as I liked this
idea and wanted to conform to the conventions displayed in my magazine I
decided to add this additional initial page including the same information but
tailored to my magazine. I think I mostly was able to follow the conventions
laid out on each of the magazines – I added different aspects from the
different pages of each of the pages that I liked into my final one. The
inclusion of a main title displayed largely was a convention of all 3 of them
so that was of course included – With BRICK, they didn’t include the brief
description however I felt that it was too simplistic with just the title so I
added a brief insight like XXL did, therefore I conformed to the conventions of
XXL’s one more. The addition of the pull quote is an example of an aspect in
which I subverted from their examples however I felt it looked good. –
Typography manipulation – change of colour selection for emphasised words to
create a pun and emphasise it.
- For my actual double
page spread, I probably conformed mostly to the layout and writing style of
BRICK and FADER, however I did add aspects of XXL into it. I followed conventions
of all real magazines such as using a drop cap at the start of a new paragraph,
and organising my writing into columns. Unlike most artist interviews (which
are in a Q&A format) I decided to do mine in a biographical profile format
as that is what had been in FADER and BRICK and those were the two double page
spreads I looked at when creating mine, mainly in terms of journalism.
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With XXL,
you can clearly see my image has been somewhat influence by the one used on the
XXL magazine. I used a similar angle, and the showcasing of costume are the
same e.g. both are wearing silver chains which as clearly displayed on the artist,
both have the same direct mode of address etc.
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With BRICK I took a lot of inspiration in terms
of layout and journalism. I decided to include a similar layout in which there
were pull-quote quotes ‘inside’ the journalism, instead of just on the picture.
This was one aspect I liked a lot when analysing the BRICK double page spread
so I implemented it in my own. I developed it to fit my magazine by having more
pull out quotes included. In terms of journalism, I copied the styling of the language
that had been implemented in the magazine’s article to create the same relaxed,
conversational tone in that magazine, whilst also maintaining some formalities.
Really good! Proofread and put into the tech! Jo
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