Evaluation Of Music Magazine Project

1.    In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

After looking at existing magazines and doing a questionnaire, I decided that I wanted to base my genre on hip hop music. I was excited about doing this because I know a lot about this music genre as it is the type of music that I am into and listen to myself, including RnB and Rap. The questionnaire that I did before starting to do my magazine helped my figure out the age group to base it on. Many people that said they were into music magazines were in the age group of 15-25 and they were of all genders so therefore I came to the decision of making my hip hop music magazine for ages 15-25 of all genders and when I came to making my magazine, made it clear throughout all the pages that it is a music magazine. The colours red and black often represent hip hop in magazines; looking at other magazines such as XXL, you will see that it is also a colour the both males and females like.

When I planned my magazine I intended it to be like my XXL magazine. I intended to focus on two main hip hop magazines, XXL and Hip Hop Weekly. However my design turned out to be quite like the XXL magazine and exactly how I planned it to be. The aspects of design I wanted to use from it were the colours such as the red, black and white fonts. As you can see my work is similar because I intended to use bold red text as my masthead, and a medium close-up image similar to the image on the XXL magazine. The contents page is also similar as I used the same colours as the front cover and contents page of the XXL magazine, and the same model.

In the contents page I included names of hip hop singers such as Chris Brown and YMCMB. These are existing singers which a very popular and famous to people who listen to hip hop music, I believe that they are a success in the music industry so therefore I added their names on my contents page.

The features that I have used challenge forms and conventions of real, existing music magazines, and most importantly, something that all existing magazines do is to Photoshop there images and that is something that I have done throughout my front cover, contents and also double page spread.

However there are some differences as I didn’t intend to use two people in my front cover like the XXL magazine and the cover lines are spread out differently from the real magazine. I also didn’t use similar pose as I intended to use my own pose instead. Also another difference is that I didn’t use the black and white effect because I personally think a colourful front cover is more eye-catching than a black and white one.

Looking at my feedback I realized that I’ve made many improvements compared to my first magazine.

2.    How does your media product represent particular social groups?

The genre of my music magazine is hip hop and my made up artists are called Trisha, La’Quisha and Kimberly. The real life artists I based them on were Nicole Scherzinger, Nicki Minaj and Kim Kardashian. They are interesting because Nicki Minaj and Nicole Scherzinger represent hip hop as they are really good role models. And especially Nicki Minaj as she is known as the Queen of Hip-Hop

The artist I featured in my double page spread is a typical hip hop artist, because of the different types of poses I chose for them to pose as, as I found different poses on the internet of hip hop artists. I tried to make them typical of the genre in the photo shoot because I didn’t want it to look over the top therefore I chose simple but hip hop poses. The models I chose were Andrea Duggal, Sakhile Khanye and Rhianna Miller and Maiya Markovic. I chose them because Andrea looks quite like Nicole Scherzinger, as she has similar hair and skin colour, and the same reason with Sakhile and Nicki Minaj. The setting was in a photo shoot studio, with white backgrounds and different lightings. The clothing I included were jeans and low tops, as it’s a hip-hop trend, and Nicole Scherzinger mostly wears tight skinny jeans.

3.    What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Harry Publications is a magazine publisher of many magazines including a lot of hip hop magazines such as XXL. I think that Harry Publications might distribute and publish my magazine because it is a music magazine of the genre hip hop and they have published hip hop music magazines in the past such as XXL so they have experience.

XXL is a successful publishing company because it’s the number one selling music magazine on the news stand, and very popular amongst the hip-hop culture. On its website XXLMAG.COM it says that it has maintained its status as the most respected hip-hop music magazine, by both consumers and the industry.

I will profit from them as my publisher because it will be read by a large amount of audience and advertised largely across the hip hop culture, and large companies as XXL are very well paid, as their average income is $56,571.

4.    Who would be the audience for your media product?

The age range of my target audience would be between 15 to 25 year olds and they’d mainly be male as there are mostly male rappers, but there are some female rappers such as Nicki Minaj. Regarding their race they’d be black Americans, as most of the rappers are, and they would be classed as middle class.

Their hobbies would tend to be going out and drinking, fashion trending. in terms of the other media texts, they’d consume they would like expensive and popular phones such as blackberries and iPhones, magazines such as Vibe and XXL, and movies such as Stomp the Yard, which features popular hip hop celebrities such as Chris Brown and Ne-Yo.

Looking at information in my XXL media pack, they’d be similar to their target audience because it contains statistics of the average buyers which are male and the average age, which is similar to my target audience age. Judging by what I learned from my questionnaire, their main desires for a music magazine would be for it to have three main matching colours, and to have an effective front cover picture.

5.    How did you attract your audience?

 I attracted my audience by having a female model. This is so that female readers look up to the hip hop model and so that males get attracted to it and lead it to buy the magazine. The colours of my magazine also attract female and male audiences because it is colours they both genders like. My masthead is also big, bold and red, typical hip hop colour so I think it would attract someone’s attention as soon as they see it on a magazine shelf inside a shop. My cover stories are very interesting so I think that that is a way of catching my audience’s eye.

My typical reader probably would pick up that there are typical attitudes and ideas in my magazine such as the slang language used and how the characters is giving direct eye contact, and how the headphones are used on the masthead. They’d like these attitudes because the headphones link with Hip-Hop, I would hope that the impression my typical reader has of this magazine overall is satisfaction and would acknowledge them that it’s a Hip-Hop magazine.

6.    What have you learnt about technologies through the process of this product?

I used many techniques in technologies in the processes of constructing this product. Before I began this project, I was not very good at using Photoshop and this project has definitely helped me get better at it. I used tools such as cropping, cloning, and brushing and many more which I am much better at.

 I also used my own software called GIMP, which is a simple way of using Photoshop, I also used the software InDesign for creating my double page spread and I found it difficult at first because it was slightly harder than Photoshop, although I had it on the mac, I never intended to use it, since I started experimenting with different tools and reading about it I started learning until I created my double page spread, even though I am not an expert, I managed to learn the basics. For my front cover I used Gimp, for manipulating and cropping my images, and applying filters and creating mastheads and different types of effects. For my contents page I used Photoshop, as I need to manipulate a lot of images and move images around and cropping as well. I also used a software which is called Portrait Professional 11, and it’s suitable for editing faces, and a higher quality than Photoshop.

Slide share was a website that I was again new too. It allowed me to upload my presentations in a much quicker and simpler way. I think that my photography skills have improved deeply from before.

I used my Nikon Coolpix L120 bridge camera to take photo shoots of my models that I used in my magazine. I also used my iPad to take and send pictures and I used different softwares to edit photos on it as well such as Show Me and a cropping software. I also used the internet to use my blog and upload my work to it; I used different types of programmes such as Slide share to upload my power points and created a Pinterest account to upload pictures that linked to my genre and my target audience. I also used dafont.com and experimented with different kinds of fonts to use for my masthead.

  7.    Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt from the progression from it to the full product?

Overall I think that both of my magazines turned out to be like I wanted them to be, however comparing both of them I think there is a slight difference as the music magazine turned out to be better; therefore I think I have improved. This is because had a magazine to compare it to my music magazine and to gain ideas of how to make it. If I had time for improvements, I would add more cover lines on my college magazine and another picture on the front cover, for the music magazine I would have made her top whiter and leave the background white but brighten it to make the image stand out. I also focused more on Photoshop than before to create different shaped and to create mastheads. I have also learnt about how to attract my audience for example by using the right colour, fonts depending on my target audience.