1. Conventions VIBE CYPHER XXL Shem Victor CYPHER

2. XXL

3. Cypher

4. Front Cover My magazine’s front cover follows many conventions that are similar to XXL magazine. For example the classic barcode that displays the month and issue number, as well as the price. This style is a convention I decided to adopt because it was essential to the structure of a professional magazine. Also my magazine front cover has 4 layers another style seen many editions of XXL. A feature Cypher has added which are not conventional and challenge XXL is lures. Lures are there to attract reader’s eye, often offering a competition or free items such as CDs. My magazine offers a free poster of 50 Cent, this relates to the main article which features the rap artist. This also represents the suggestion that hip/hop fans idealise their favourite artist and hang up posters of them. Another convention my magazine and XXL have followed are the colour scheme red, black, white. The colour red represents danger which is often associated with hip/hop genre. The black to represent the underground urban culture and small amounts of white to create contrast against the red and black. This creates a house style which is followed throughout the magazine. Behind the barcode on my magazine is a footer. This displays information about the alternative media platforms available to readers. I have added this because there is an increase in demand for young adults accessing media online, so with the publisher Buer being a global distributer I was able to create an online presence. This also offers a chance for advertising which can help to cover printing cost of the magazine. My magazine’s front cover follows many conventions that are similar to XXL magazine. For example the classic barcode that displays the month and issue number, as well as the price. This style is a convention I decided to adopt because it was essential to the structure of a professional magazine. Also my magazine front cover has 4 layers another style seen many editions of XXL.

5. Vibe

6. Cypher

7. Contents Page A convention that is followed by both Vibe and my magazine Cypher is that they keep to their house styles. The colour and font follow throughout the whole magazine of red, black and white as does the Vibe style of black and gray. A convention my magazine challenges is that vibe, alongside may other magazines, the contents page is a page long. Whereas Cypher’s contents page is set over a double page layout. Even though the contents page is over two pages, it contains the two subsections of features and regulars which are popular amongst many music magazines. Another convention Cypher and Vibe have adopted is adding a smaller version of their mastheads on the contents page. Vibe use a large ‘V’ to represent their masthead where as my magazine has a smaller sized image of the Cypher masthead going across the header of the page. Vibe along with many other magazines follow a style of listing the items on the contents page, instead my magazine adopts the style of boxes. I chose to use this style to because readers are used to seeing the classic style and I believe it is to simple and boring. My magazine is a non minimalist and tries to appear exciting because of the way young adults see media in this era. Also the contents page is set on page 3 and 4. This is conventional amongst hip/hop and urban magazines. Usually a short a story or advertisement in between the front cover and contents. I decided to use this format to allow the enhancement of the advertisements as soon as readers open the magazine, this would be a way to sell advertisement space at high prices to bring income for the magazine to help cover costs.

8. XXL

9. Vibe

10. Cypher

11. Double Page Spread Conventional to both Vibe and XXL my magazine uses a full bleed image that takes over the whole left page. Also credits going up the sides of the images. Another convention all three magazines use are the format of two columns. I believe this is because it stretches out the text making it look simple and not over cluttered. Especially whilst looking at the target audience who prefer reading less text as appose to heavy text amounts. XXL and Vibe articles are a lot longer then Cypher’s. I decided to do this because from doing my research, I found that my target audience prefer articles that are shorter with lots of information rather than lots of text.