2. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge
forms and conventions of real media products?
Front cover
This is my front cover with VIBE magazine. As you can see, they are both very bold and noticeable
which I think is important. Like vibe, I wanted my text to be bold which I thought would help to
reflect the genre of the magazine and relate to my target audience. The colours were something I
had to think carefully about when it came to creating my cover lines and the masthead because
not only did they need to be boId they had to be readable, they had to link in with the genre of the
magazine and also the images on the cover. Also my magazine and vibe magazines masthead are
both slightly covered by the main artists head slightly, I think this is a convention of a magazine
that was important as not only vibe magazine do this.
3. Front Cover
The image on the front cover is the most important image so it was vital I got the
look right so that it would attract my target audience. I had to find a model for my
front cover who acted as a sort of representative for the magazine and
immediately portrayed the genre and style and what people could expect from my
magazine. I think a clear image of my artist face was quite effective as all the
focus is on him, also by him having his hood up helped to represent my genre of
grime as I think that you need confidence for that genre and also a stereotype is
that hoodies would be associated with this genre of music, so I tried to embrace
this in a not so negative way, similar to vibe magazine with a close shot of Kanye
Wests which brings more of the attention to him. Also the colour of the cover lines
for both magazines compliment the image and the masthead which makes it all
flow into one another.
5. Contents Page
• I tried to three different sections to my contents page to try and
differentiate from the common layout of other magazines. I had the
features page which most magazines have and mainly focus on like
vibe magazine. But I didn’t want this to be the main focus of my
magazine and wanted everything else to be just as important to my
target audience, as I think it would make them look forward to the next
issue. Organisation was important to me and I wanted everything to be
clear and readable yet still be eye catching. I found this example of
VIBE magazine (left) in which the contents page was clearly organised
and that's where I got the inspiration for my features page. One other
key convention which I found in every magazine I looked in was sub-
headings. These are important to me because I think that they act as a
navigation tool for the readers. I wanted to make these bold and clear
for the readers to see and have them in a clear and logical layout. I had
a lot of things to fit onto my content and I had to make sure that the
layout was correct and not messy.
6. Double page spread
When I was researching magazines I saw that most magazines devoted a whole page to an
image to the cover artist so I kept this key convention for my magazine (left) and is also
shown in vibe magazine (right). Also quotes across a photo seemed to also be a common
convention and I thought pulling a quote from out of the interview would draw readers in a
bit more. In addition to this I put a photo in between the interview questions which I
thought would make my magazine differentiate slightly from others as the text page
wouldn’t completely be filled with text and be a little boring and less attractive to read.
7. 2. How does your magazine product represent particular social groups?
• I used mainly black people in my magazine as this is what I believe was my main
target audience for my magazine. I think that I conformed slightly to the stereotype
of what a grime artist would look like with some of my pictures. But my main artist
didn’t completely conform to the stereotype which is what I wanted. I tried to make it
this way so that it could show that anybody could do this kind of music and change
the way the social group is represented. I also think that my magazine enhanced the
idea that my magazine was for 16-25 year olds as it showed that they’re not that
interested in reading a lot but prefer to look at things through images.
• I did add text in my magazine but not a lot unless it was for articles on artists as
these things would be interesting to read about, however the style of writing I used
applied to my target audience as it was slightly less informal. In addition to this I also
added a lot of things about making it in the industry which I think people who are
interest in this genre are interested in. I think that my social group would be interest
in these kinds of things as people in that age group try to make it in the industry and
this is enhancing their skills on how to do it. In addition to this the choice of clothing
was based on what my audience thought was trendy and in style so in that sense I
did to conform to particular social groups.
8. 3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and
why?
• The publisher I would use is Bauer media because they do publish
quite popular magazines however there is a gap in their market as they
haven’t published a grime music magazine which I think would be
good as then I would mean that they would be exploring more fields of
the magazine industry. Also my magazine is also for a younger
audience and from a slightly different racial background. In addition to
this I think that they would help use to develop a radio station later on
when my magazine will be more well-known as they already own a lot
of popular radio stations
9. 4. Who would be the audience for your media product?
• My target audience for my magazine would be young people that were
interested in grime music and a little bit of house that are aged 16-25.
Also my target audience is also for people that take interest in clothing
and shoes and what grime artist are wearing and where to get stuff
from. My audience are aged 16-25 because I think that this age group
enjoy music magazines and they look for something that has less
writing and seems as if the magazine is directly written for them and
would help them forget about school, work, college or university.
Likewise my target audience will attract mainly young black youths
and mostly boys as they are more into grime music because there are
mostly males in that industry.
