Front Cover

Contents Page

Double Page Spread

Evaluation Question 7 - What Do You Feel You Have Learnt From The Progression To The Final Product?

Evaluation Question 6 - What Kind of Media Institution might Distribute your Product and why?

Publishing:

The publisher that I would like to use as a publisher for my product is IPC Media. The main reason behind this choice is that because they are one of the leading media institutions in the United Kingdom. IPC already publish music magazines for millions of people to see such as ‘NME’, and as my product is a music magazine then I am certain that there will be no problem with people accessing IPC media to view a digital copy of my magazine. Also, IPC is a very well established publisher which has a very wide reach across all types of audiences. Around 26 million People in the UK read or have read a magazine published by IPC so there should be no problem there with regards to people seeing my magazine as long as the correct type and sufficient advertising and marketing is used

Distribution:

The first thing that I would look to do is print physical copies of my magazine and publish this inside book retailers such as WH Smith and Waterstones etc. Also, supermarket branches are quickly becoming some of the best magazine selling companies in the country, such as Tesco and ASDA. Therefore, I would look to supermarkets like thee and try to distribute my product from their shelves.

However, with more than 60 iconic media brands I would have to turn to IPC as a distributer as IPC creates content for multiple platforms, across print, online, mobile, tablets and events. This means I would have to create a digital or visual/interactive copy of my magazine that would allow readers to access my magazine on multiple platforms. By creating a digital copy of my magazine I am ensuring that I am able to compete with existing competing music magazines as well as ensuring young people have the chance to read the product, as more people now choose to use the internet than buying physical copies of magazines.

Evaluation Question 5 - In What Way Does Your Media Product Use, Develop or Challenge Forms and Conventions of Real Media Products?

Evaluation Question 4 - What have you Learnt About Technologies?

Evaluation Question 3 - How does your Product Represent Particular Social Groups?

The target audience of my magazine is a younger male population. Since I chose to target my magazine at this audience, I had to make sure that features within my magazine corresponded with the particular social group that involves themselves with hip hop and rap music.

Often you find that people who take a keen interest in hip hop follow the fashion trends set by their favoured artists. This meant that before I could set up to take my photographs for the magazine, I had to find out what sort of clothing rap artists wear, although I feel that I already had a brief knowledge on this topic. After completing my research, I found out that recently, artists are swapping out baggy clothing for a tighter fit style of clothing, and it is visible that many young hip hop fans are also taking on this new style. For this reason I made sure that my cover model wore skinny jeans and a jumper in his size. Jewellery is very popular within the rap industry because artists often wear it as a symbol of wealth and so my cover model is also wearing a gold watch, and on the double page spread a chain.

Body language plays a major part in hip hop, where some artists like to be outgoing and in the spotlight most of the time, other artists like to stay out of headlines and from their music we can discover a lot about their personality. You will often find that social groups that follow Hip hop music tend to be loud and extrovert when together however like to produce their own rap lyrics which sometimes have deep meaning behind them when alone. My media product represents this because on the front cover my artist is standing facing the camera and looking it straight in the eye showing he will not shy away, if you must. However, on the double page spread of my magazine the artists has a different facial expression and appears to be deep in thought as if to suggest his lyrics have meaning behind them and he is not just producing music for the money.

Evaluation Question 2 - How did you Attract/Address Your Audience?

Evaluation Question 1 - Who Would be the Audience for your Media Product?

Changes

After receiving feedback from my peers, I realised that there were a few things that were not included on my magazine that would make it that little bit better such as page furniture and space that could be filled on my front cover without spoiling how it already looked. Due to the fact that I had taken the red from my cover models jumper to use as the red throughout the magazine I will make the stamp this colour to keep a common house style consistent.

When I did this, the red appeared to be brighter on the stamp than it is on the text however i can assure you that everywhere that there is red on my magazine the same shade of red has been used. 

The changes will appear on my Final product.

Contents Page Draft

Double Page Spread Draft

Font Page Draft

Double Page Spread

Double page spreads are usually found in the very centre of the magazine. The double page spread topic usually corresponds with the main cover line of the front page of a magazine. Topics that you would usually find on a double page spread would be articles on the artist, interviews about the artist/bands up coming songs and tours etc. and  things such as reviews on artists and their music. 

Key words that will entice your reader:

1. DANGER - The word danger makes alarm bells ring in the readers head as they will want to find out what is so dangerous and therefore feel the need to read into the magazine article and find out more. 
2. CONTROVERSY - This word will let readers know that something may come up in the article of interest as there may be conflict or tension between the interview and artist or artist  and people they know or associate themselves with.
3. ORIGINAL - Original gives the impression to the reader that the artist could be first to come up with an idea or something along these lines, being original often means standing out from the crowd and not being too mainstream (as many artists tend to move towards) so readers may want to find out more about these 'original artists'.

Double Page Spread Mock Up

This is a mock up of my Double page spread design. This is roughly what I want my double page spread to be set out like and hopefully when producing my final piece I will be able to recreate this design while including the different components that will make up the double page spread.

Contents Page Mock Up

For my Contents page, I looked at copies of VIBE magazine for inspiration. I saw an edition of VIBE where the editors had set out the contents over two pages and I really liked some of the features from both. After studying the two pages, I came up with the idea to try and 'fuse' them into one. By doing this I came up with this flat plan for my contents page. I have decided to use the conventional 'contents' as the title of this page, however, I am going to try and recreate the style that VIBE write it in, where the text is broken up to convey the convention that hip hop goes against regularity.

Front Cover Mock Up

This is my flat plan (mock up) of what i think my magazine front cover is going to look like. My inspiration for the layout of the magazine comes from the magazine 'VIBE' which is also a hip hop magazine that includes all the latest hip hop news and trends. After looking at 2 issues of 'VIBE' magazine I have managed to recreate my own layout which I think will give a sophisticated look to the front of my magazine so readers find it easy to navigate the magazine front cover and see which cover line represents the cover photo and so on. Instead of using a typical banner across the top of my magazine I will be using a strap line which is a bit different to conventional music magazines but after doing my research I discovered that a strap line is fairly common on hip hop magazine like VIBE. I think that the strap line is a good feature because it will further attract readers to want to discover more from the inside of this magazine. I have decided to implement this into my design because it will leave room on the rest of my cover for my cover lines to go and will not over crowd the page.

I will be making my masthead solid block capitals and the colour of the font will have a gradient overlay that fades into a transparent colour so that you see the background. This is an idea that I have seen on multiple issues of vibe and I think it gives off a really nice effect. The cover line that will be aligned right will be on the right hand side of the page and will be aligned to this side to correspond with the side of the page that it lies on giving off a real sense of sophistication and a look of professionalism as almost every magazine using this technique in the industry. The main cover line will also be a bigger font size to the cover lines that lie on the left side of the page. This will suggest to the readers that that this cover line coincides to the main cover photo and will therefore be one of the main stories/articles in the magazine.

One thing that I have chosen to do is to keep text to a minimum on the front cover because this will make my front cover look over crowded and will take the focus away from the main cover photo and this is something that I do not want to happen. After doing research I also found out that most readers like to look at the picture so I do not want to include too much text and make the ratio of text:images too big. This is because most people often pick up magazines to have a quick glance at the images before further reading into the articles and stories.

Second Analysis of Music Magazine (VIBE)

Here is a second edition of VIBE magazine that I have taken the time to analyse by breaking down different components within the magazine. I will be looking to VIBE for a lot of inspiration when creating my magazine because I am going for a similar look as I feel like it is very styled yet sophisticated.

First Analysis of VIBE

Here is a presentation in which I have completely analysed the front cover, contents page, and double page spread of VIBE magazine. I have tried to include as much detail as possible for each part of the breakdown. I tried to leave out features that were less important as I would avoid using these in my final production anyway, therefore  I have analysed fully features that I deem impressive and would like to try and re-create in my final production.