The document discusses the development of a music magazine focused on the grime genre. It draws inspiration from existing magazines like RWD and Kerrang! in terms of conventions like listing artists and using bright colors. However, it also challenges conventions by using a balance of subtle and bright colors rather than just one type, and associating other colors like red with grime music rather than just rock. The intended audience is described as young black youth interested in grime music and its commentary on political issues. Existing retailers like HMV and large supermarkets are identified as potential distributors that could stock and sell the magazine alongside the featured artists' music.

1. In what ways does your music magazine use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of existing music magazines? I think that my magazine takes inspiration from RWD. It uses similar conventions for the cover in particular as they list the artists in the issue, I liked this idea and so took the inspiration for it, listing the artist’s. Also, RWD appeals to an audience of whom would describe themselves as ‘Simple’ and so I have kept my magazine as simple as possible, but keeping it relevant to what I’m promoting through my magazine at the same time. Also, I noticed that the two magazines that I took inspiration from had no specific colour to single out a gender or a very specific age group. I also got inspiration form a magazine that was nothing to do with my genre of music, Kerrang!, because of it’s layout and appeal to the same age group, though through a different genre. I found that the layout of the contents page and one article in particular really caught my eye and influenced the design of both of my contents page and my main feature. I was particularly attracted the bright colours and so copied this design as an inspiration for my layout, using bright colours to attract the eye.

2. However, I decided to use a balance between subtle colours and bright colours, challenging the typical idea of staying with just a set of bright colours or just a set of subtle colours for my magazine. I have also challenged a stereo typical association of red with rock. I think this is a powerful idea as it shows that any person could show an interest in grime as it is an expression of personal voice and so by challenging this stereo typical view of red being associated with red, I think I have broadened my target audience. I also used an original font from www.dafont.com, making my magazine non identical to any other at all. In what ways does your music magazine use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of existing music magazines?

3. How does your music magazine represent particular social groups? I think that my music magazine represents a young, black youth culture. I think that it also reaches out to people who are interested in young people's views on the crisis of the political world and how they speak out about it as this is what grime music is all about. I think that I have represented this through my images as I have shown images of young men, who have a passion for music and are socially classed as criminals.It also represented a certain type of people through psychographics as, the social groups I focused on were of a specific social circle which was that of a young social group, caring about; appearance, social networking and technology, as shown in my mood board. As I said before, my main focus of my images was to represent the right idea of these young people, which is not that they are criminals. This means that they are simply misunderstood, similar to the music genre, which is like rap, a form of poems, but spoke or sung in a different format.

4. What kind of institution might distribute your music magazine and why? I think that newsagent’s and music specialist shops would distribute my magazine as then it is available easily, but also it shows that my audience has a key interest in the genre of music by buying it form a music specific shop rather than their local supermarket, where I think that my audience would not see my magazine as a serious publication. An example of this is HMV, the biggest UK retailer of Media entertainment. I think that my magazine would also be sold in large major supermarket’s. I would only sell it in large supermarket’s as this would mean that the shop has everything there, including a large selection of music. So, theoretically, my magazine would be available along with the music of the artist’s features in the issue.

5. Who would be the audience for your music magazine? I though about my target audience initially using demographics, so that I could think about my target audience in great detail when planning my magazine. I thought about the age, gender and colour of my reader’s. I showed all of this in my Target audience profile. I think the audience for my magazine would be a fairly young audience as ‘Grime’ is written and mainly supported by young people, so it engages a common interest. I think it also has the factor of enticing young people to read it as the majority of the artist’s are fairly young and the main feature is on a group considered very young compared with the rest of the music industry. However, only marginally young in the world of grime, showing that my target audience is quite young and supportive of people of a similar age group.

6. Also, when re-considering demographics in to my target audience, I realised that my magazine would mainly be based at male’s and to show this, I used male artist’s for my main feature. But to make sure that I could broaden my audience, I made sure to make girls feel like they could read the magazine by also including an image of a girl, in a studio. Proving that not just boys can be artist’s with in the genre of Grime. I made this clear through the layout and design of my magazine, as I have made the magazine’s layout very simple, to show that it isn’t something made to feel intimidating because of the amount of text. I also used fairly simple words to publicise my magazine, using very simple adjective’s, relating to the age of my target audience. Through demographics, I identified that the majority of my target audience were to be black and between the ages of 13 – 18. Who would be the audience for your music magazine?

7. How did you attract/ address the audience for your music publication? To attract my audience, I asked a group of friends both from in and out of college what they find a common interest in grime. From this I found that they all believed that new artist’s with a different organisation of words and a different meaning tot hem was what made the genre of an interest. So, by using these spoken results, (which I did not think to tabulate, but use more for my own personal research) I decided that having the main feature on a not-very-heard-about group was a good way to spread this message, but also to relate my magazine to artist’s well known with in the genre and awards they had won in the ‘MOBO’s’ to show that my magazine was up-to-date and to show that it didn’t consist of things that were irrelevant to the industry at this time.

8. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product? Form constructing this product, I have learnt about different tools on photo shop, such as; The lasso tool Layering Linking layering Adding affects such as drop-shadow’s to an image How to change the colouring and texture of an image How to keep the colours on a page consistent By learning these different skills, I have learnt how to make my magazine completely different to someone with the same idea and the same purpose, yet make successfully promote different artist’s with a different purpose with in the genre. I have also learnt other IT skills along this process, some of these skills are how to use: www.blogger.com www.dafont.com www.slideshare.com Apple pages software

9. Looking back at your preliminary task, of designing the front page of a school magazine, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product? I think that form the preliminary task, I learnt that I didn’t like the layout and the way my image was just a block, I knew that I wanted to have a cut-out image to show more skill through photo shop and to attempt to make my final music magazine look more like an actual magazine on sale. I also knew that I wanted to vary the font size more looking back, to give my front cover a different element and show what my audience should hopefully be engaged with on my front cover. Finally, I learnt that I wanted the background to my images to be simple or have a specific purpose to the text that they were relating to, to show that I had thought behind the image rather than just pasting it in to add a different element to my page.

10. Looking back at your preliminary task, of designing the front page of a school magazine, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product? I learnt that to achieve a successful contents page, I wanted to keep images, but to make my contents page look and feel more organised rather that scatter images to go next to a piece of test with out a thought