2. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media
products?
• My magazine front cover page uses and challenges the forms and conventions of real magazines in both the
contents page and the front cover page. Elements which are usually found on a front cover page of a music
magazine would include a selling line, cover line, cover story, the corporate identity, the image of the artist,
dateline, website, price and barcode which is what I included in the front cover page of my magazine. However, I
challenged the conventions of a front cover page by including an image that supports the main image which will
add interest to the target audience as they will believe that there is more information to come since there is a
supporting image with a cover story showing an insight of what is to feature.
• My contents page also follows conventions of what most music magazines contains which are cover stories which
anchors the image in relevance, folios which are used to make my audience find the article they want to read
quicker, features which allows the reader to find out what stories are going to be inside the magazine and the title
being "contents" at the top of the page. I transgressed the conventions of a contents page by applying two
supporting images alongside the main image as I thought that the images would grab my target audience's
attention a little bit more due to the pictures containing people who are of their age range.
• Both my front cover and contents page contains colours and fonts which are compatible with the hip-hop genre as
the colours included red (mainly), white and black which symbolises danger and a lot of hip-hop artists refer to
themselves as dangerous. The fonts I used predominantly for both pages was the "impact" font which is the
corporate identity of magazine as the magazine name is written in this font. Impact is straightforward and would
attract my target audience's attention as reflect seriousness and not anything that is immature since it does not
feature any fancy fonts and it would not appeal to an feminine audience because the colours used connotes
danger, whereas pink and white would signify femininity and purity.
• The DPS adopts conventions of real media products as well as the front cover page and the contents page. It uses
a heading, a subheading, an article of an interview between a rapper and the writer of the article, the byline,
photo credit and the main image which sits on the first page of the spread with no other images supporting it. The
key conventions I did not include was a dropcap since I believed that the readers would know where the article
will start from as the questions are written in an orange colour with the answers being written in white. I also did
not include a pull-out quote since my subheading contains a quote which comes from the interview so I believed I
could've conserve more space on the spread that way.
3. How does your media product represent particular social groups
• My media product represents my particular social
group visually through the images and stories relating
to teenagers and young adults. The images on the front
cover page, contents page and double-page spread all
contains teenagers with articles and stories which
relates to it. My target audience would be attracted to
my product because of the images being of artists who
are the same age as them which will make them feel as
though the product relates to them. They could buy
the product and find out what stories are within the
magazine and they would unravel what is the similarity
between them and the artists.
4. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
• Media institutions that may distribute my
product would be all good record stores
e.g.Virgin Megastores since it is a shop which
sells music records. Whilst my target audience
is looking for a hip-hop CD, they could come
across a hip-hop magazine which they'll be
instantly attracted by since they are interested
in the hip-hop genre already.
5. Who would be the audience for your media product?
• The age of my target audience for my product would
roughly be between 15-28 since I am attracting teenagers
and young adults. The photos and stories I will be using
within the magazine would all be based on young rap
artists so my target audience would feel intrigued as they
will feel that the media product relates to them.
• The hip-hop genre contains rappers who are from the
inner-city suburban areas and they would see themselves
as a product of their environment. Many of my target
audience may support their favourite artists since the
rappers came from the same area as some of my target
audience so I would be attracting young people from inner-
city areas.
6. How did you attract/address you audience?
I addressed my target audience by including a catchy
selling line "THE UK'S MOST DIVERSE HIP-HOP
MAGAZINE" which would attract my audience as they
would believe that this magazine is the biggest hip-hop
product in the UK. The cover line would also help address
my audience as it is written in a quite large font size
"UNORTHODOX" and they would be attracted to story
and would purchase the product to unravel what is inside
the story. The main image and the supporting image both
consists of well-known hip-hop artists and this will attract
my target audience through their popularity and talent.
7. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing the product?
• I have learnt how to use the key features of Adobe
Photoshop and InDesign effectively to create my product. I
used InDesign to construct my product and the features
which I found made it successful was the "rectangle tool"
which I used to input images, "strokes" which outlined the
text on both my contents page and front cover page to
make it stand out and show importance and "columns"
which I used to structure where my article will be place on
the double-page spread.
• I used Photoshop to modify my selected images and the
tools which helped me do so was the "crop tool" to cut
parts of the images that I did not need out. I also
brightened my images if they were too dark.
8. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full
product?
• When I started the preliminary task, I didn't fully
understand how to use Photoshop and did not at
all understand how to use InDesign. However, I
spent more of my free time using the softwares
and eventually understood how to use them. I
have progressed from being a novice with these
softwares to being comfortable using them so I
believe that the my main task has work which is
huge in contrast to the preliminary task although
I felt that the preliminary task was helpful in
making me use the softwares effectively.
