UseIn the Rolling Stone music magazine, a close up of the main artist ‘s(Wiz Khalifa) face is used to show who the main article of the magazine is about. His face is in front of the magazine’s masthead to attract more attention to him and make him stand out, showing that the magazine is well-known enough that it doesn’t all have to be seen. In Yoyo magazine, this same technique has been used; the main artist’s head is in front of the masthead and covers it up slightly. Also, in Rolling Stone, the stories and copy are all on one side of the page to give it a smooth look. This has been used in Yoyo magazine to create the same effect. However, in Rolling Stone, the bar-code cannot be seen on the front, but can be in most other magazine front covers of this genre; that is why Yoyo contains a bar-code on the front cover. These are some of the forms and conventions that my magazine has used from a real media product.

DevelopYoyo magazine has developed upon forms and conventions of real media products by using the shapes on the front cover. For example, the plus sign to show what else is inside the magazine in terms of other artists and the vertical line that attracts attention to the secondary story of the magazine. Also, the chance to win an album is mentioned to attract the reader’s attention even more than it already has, making them want to buy the magazine for the chance to win it. The red circle at the top also stands out as there is nothing else red on the page and lets our audience know that there is a free mixed CD inside the magazine when you buy it, making them want to purchase the magazine even more.

ChallengeIn terms of how Yoyo challenged real media products, more colour has been used on the artist rather than the colour scheme instead of having a colourful magazine (as seen by Rolling Stone’s red font and masthead) with a less colourful main artist; this draws more attention to the artist who is featured in this certain issue of the magazine, which is how I wanted it to be. The main story, secondary story and other features of the magazine are on the left-hand side of the front cover of Yoyo rather than the right-hand side in Rolling Stone. Also, the magazine’s Twitter and Facebook accounts have been put in so that readers can take it a step further and follow the magazine online, this is effective as many people use these social networking sites nowadays.

UseIn the Q contents page, the title saying “contents” stands out as it is at the top of the page. The image linked with the main story is also in big and is the first thing you see when you look at the contents page due to its size and prominence amongst everything else. Smaller images are also used to link with secondary stories and the colour scheme follows the same colours as the front cover of the magazine. Features and regulars are shown in the contents page to show what is inside the issue and what is expected from the magazine. These have all been done in Yoyo’s contents page and this is how forms and conventions have been used in my media product from a real media product.

DevelopYoyo magazine develops conventions and forms of a real media product by only having one thing that sticks out as a certain colour which is in a similar position on the page as in the front cover. Each story is in its own box with a caption giving a brief description about what the story is about. There is only two stories as these are the ones featured in that issue of the magazine rather than in the Q magazine where lots more stories have their own picture. As Yoyo’s contents is only on one page, this is why that has been done so that the page does not get too overcrowded.

ChallengeIn Q magazine, the contents page is spread over two pages rather than using only one, which most other magazines of this genre have done. Yoyo magazine has challenged this as it has been created on only a single page, conforming to the more common contents pages of magazines from the hip-hop music genre. The regulars of Yoyo magazine are also in their own box rather than on the opposite side to the features, which is how it is in Q magazine.

UseThe double page spread of Yoyo is quite similar to the double page spread of the Streetz magazine in terms of spacing and positioning on the page. The page numbers are in the same place at the bottom left-hand corner of each page, the name of the magazine has been placed at the top left of each page, a floating quote is at the top left of the right page, and the pictures and article are in the same place along with the title and introduction to the article in a block on the left page. This has been done because the real media product double page spread appealed to me and made me think that this is how I would like mine to turn out, with the same effectiveness. This is how Yoyo has used forms and conventions from a real media product.

DevelopYoyo has developed forms and conventions of a real media product by adding a background behind the floating quote to make it stand out further amongst the other features of the article rather than using a different coloured font like how the Streetz magazine has done. This would have diverted from the colour scheme of Yoyo magazine as three colours have already been used, so I developed this feature in a way that worked for my magazine, with the same effect that has been created in the Streetz magazine.

ChallengeYoyo has challenged some conventions and forms of this real media product by using a long-shot of the artist with a shadow behind him to take up a similar amount of space as the medium-shot of Lupe Fiasco has done. Also a different image than the secondary image on the Streetz double page spread page has been used to connote how ‘down-to-earth’ the artist in my magazine’s main story is; adding to the effectiveness and dynamics of the article.