slide 03 - In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products (contents)

This slide shows the comparison of my media products contents page to that of an existing real media product. The compared contents is that of NME magazine published 6 September 2004.

In the slide we can see i have highlight aspect of similarities and some of differences within the two products, most of the highlights focus on that of the similarities rather than the differences. However i do aim to highlight these differences none the less.

Similarities:

Both my media product and that of the real media product (NME) have a bold title which clearly stands out from the page among the other aspects which the document contains. The difference is in the wording of this product with NME choosing to go with "this week" as their main heading for their contents page whereas my media product uses a simplistic headline of "contents". The positioning for these headlines is pretty similar with the exception of my media product me biased towards top left alignment and NME's biased towards top right alignment.

Both media product include 2 main images which are clearly separate from the rest of the articles, however the placement of these two articles are very different in comparison. NME chooses to sit the image side by side towards the top right of the page but my media product chooses to situate its images more towards the corners with one image taking its place top right and the other bottom left.

Both media products contain a contents which is presented with titles which segregate each sector to its own separate title. Making it easier for the audience to navigate their way through the magazine. These titles are clearly separate from the contents pages numbers and headlines which are printed to portray each article or event information.

Both magazines use shapes behind the text as a method of distinguishing the text more clearly amongst the background and as a method of making the overall appearance more appealing than of text on a busy back ground or on plain background.

Differences/ Lacking:

However the magazines also have elements which are different. The elements are those which one contains and the other does not. An example of which would be the fact that my product chooses to continue with the brick wall theme and use this as its back ground for it contents page where as NME does not have a back ground too their contents page and instead chooses to go with a more minimalistic plain white background.

Another difference is that i chose to focus solely on telling the readers the contents which they could find within the magazine therefore motivating the readers to leave the contents page behind and venture into the world of the articles. NME has a different approach by choosing to include a small article within its contents page. another aspect is the inclusion of small advertisements which are placed specifically in certain areas these are either advertising gigs/events or competitions.

NME choose to include their logo in their document however i did not see this necessary so instead chose to show that my work is a continuance by clearly showing a constant house style throughout the pages.

Some of the advertisements such as those to subscribe for the magazine cause the reader to lose site of what the page is about their attention is not drawn to the page numbers for different articles or interviews but to the advertisement at the bottom of the page trying to convince the reader to purchase a subscription.