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

2. Clothing
• I dressed model in mainly black clothing as black clothing is very popular
in the hip-hop genre as this portrays the mysterious nature of the music
genre. This is very similar to the Arise magazine where the model Tyra
Banks is wearing a black dress and also quite similar to Vibe magazine
where the model Keri Hilson is also wearing a black body suit.
• I decided to add a stylish black hat to my model in order to make her look
classier; however this differed from Vibe magazine image where the
model is wearing a boat hat. I dressed my model in a black leather jacket
and a white top which revealed a little bit of cleavage in order to make
her look attractive and sexy. Furthermore, I also dressed my model in
black leggings which is commonly worn by many people who are
interested in hip-hop. There is a lot of movement involved in hip-hop
therefore the leggings allows people to flexibly move and this is why I
have made my model wear this.

3. Hair
• Hair is quite an important feature in magazine images as this represents
the social group who are interested in the magazine. In my magazine, I
kept the hair style of my model plain only using a middle parting to reveal
the sides of her hair because most hip hop related men like myself are
often attracted to women with this hair style. This is quite similar to the
Vibe magazine image where the model also has a middle parting and the
hat covers most of her hair which is the similar to my own model.
Furthermore, I also added some brown highlights in my model’s hair in
order to possibly make her look more attractive to customers who are
going to be buying my magazine.

4. Gesture
When taking the picture for my magazine front cover I made sure that my
model’s hands were kept busy as this would make the image stronger and
less dull. Therefore, I asked my model to place her hands on her knees as
this is quite a strong position and also reveals the jewelleries which she is
wearing on her wrists. I feel that posture represents particularly hip-hop
social groups because people who live by the hip-hop lifestyle often enjoy
showing off their expensive jewelleries therefore I feel that the customers
could relate to this.

5. Gaze/Posture
I made sure that my model had a concentrated gaze which made it seem
like my model was directing staring at the customers. This was similar to
the Arise magazine image where the model also had a concentrated gaze
which made the model look more attractive and appealing to the
customer and this was what I was trying to portray with my model.

6. The lighting
After taking the picture for my magazine front cover, I found that the
lighting was quite low in the picture. Therefore I added some artificial
light in order to boost the contrast of the image. Changing the lighting of
the image also helped to boost the quality of image making it clearer for
the customers. This differed from the Arise magazine and also the Q
magazine where the lighting was quite low in order to perhaps portray the
dark and mysterious nature of the image. Similarly, just like my magazine
front cover image, Arise magazine used artificial light in order to add the
effectiveness of the image. However, this often comes with a cost as the
customers will be drawn to the background and the lighting of the image
rather than the image itself and this is why I didn’t use dark lightings.

7. Shot type and angle
Most hip-hop magazines often use mid-shot images in their front cover
however, I have used a full shot on my front cover image because I
wanted to reveal all the clothing and accessories which my model was
wearing including her shoes. This was quite similar to Q magazine where
they have also used a full shot on the model in order to reveal her full
outfit even though the model isn’t wearing a top. However, the Q
magazine image was taken from a rightwards angle whereas I decided to
take my image from a straight angle in order to get all the clothing and
accessories of my model from the level.