Comparing the my product with existing products

By Mitchell Turner

Front Cover

My product has many media conventions which are found in real life media products. It uses cover lines, buzz words and use of one key image. The existing product uses a coloured box under the cover lines in order to make them more defined for the audience, I feel that that particular technique could have been used in my product.

The existing product uses a gradient background to make the key image stand out, this technique should have been used in my product because the current black background which has been used is not very appealing to the target audience of my product.

My product also follows methods which existing products use by placing the barcode and price information in the bottom corner of the page, this method allows more white space for cover lines and extra information about what will be in the issue.

Double page spread

The double page spread follows many media conventions which are used in real life media products. The method of using one page of text and then the second page with the key image allows the audience the freedom of reading the article and then enjoying the image which engages with the audience.

The editing on the key image enhances the person in the image by blurring out the background, this technique makes the text which has been added on top of the image stand out more and the point of interest (the iPad) stand out more as well.

The double page spread challenged media conventions by not including much content on the second page, I thought that the first was very text heavy so the audience would not want to see the same amount on the second page as they would get bored.

Contents page

The contents page follows media conventions by containing multiple images which link to articles within the magazine. It also uses a linear numbering method which helps the audience to find the article they want much quicker. The contents page also spreads out the articles into four different sections which is widely used in the media industry.

My contents page challenged media conventions by using a very different layout to what most magazines use. Firstly I connected the first image to the ‘Features’ column as it would leave more white space and allow for there to be space between the different sections. Secondly by including more than one image it meant that the audience would be able to engage with the product more and less about how much text there was on the page. Finally I used a plain background so that the audience was not distracted and so they could read the text and find the article they want to read.