The document describes how the student designed a magazine cover for a hip hop music magazine. To design the cover, the student took inspiration from existing hip hop magazines such as Vibe by observing various magazine covers and selecting conventions like color scheme, tagline, image placement, fonts, and cover story mentions. The student combined several conventions from different magazines to create a unique but appealing cover for the target audience. The cover image challenges stereotypes often portrayed on magazine covers while still representing the hip hop genre.

1. In what ways does your media product
use, develop or challenge forms and
conventions of real media products?
When planning the design for my product I intended to make it
equivalent to a well-known hip hop music magazine brand such as
Vibe, in order to do this I needed to take inspiration from existing
products so I created a mood board, this gave me a rough idea of
what I should aim to make my magazine look like. After observing
various hip hop magazines I selected a few of my favourite
conventions and combined them with conventions I made myself to
make my music magazine; I used many conventions but the main
conventions that make my magazine stand out are: the colour
scheme, the tag line, the position of the main image, the font, the
quote from a famous popular hip hop artist and the main story
being mentioned on the front cover, not all hip hop magazines have
all of these conventions but majority of them do have at least 3 of
these conventions, so by combining all of these conventions I have
made a unique front cover that appeals to the target audience as
the reader is likely to be attracted to a variety of conventions rather
than a few similar conventions.

2. Here are 2 of the sources I used as inspiration for my
magazine cover. the layout for the text and the sizes of the
different fonts and styles are closely mirrored in my
cover, this is to create an identity of a general Hip-Hop
magazine. However, the image I have used in my cover is
slightly different from a typical hip hop magazine. This offers
my magazine the uniqueness required in order for a new
magazine to be picked off from the shelves. It also challenges
the stereotypes of the way Hip-Hop artists are represented in
magazine covers. Sports cars, jewellery, guns and half-naked
girls are very common in these magazines, which portray
achievements/desires. Therefore the image I have used
represents a new generation of hip hop as it converts from
the normal dress code. By this, I hope my front cover will help
unveil another side of the Hip-Hop world.

3. How does your media product
represent particular social
groups?
Hip Hop is part of a mass market when it comes to music, over
the years Hip hop has gained major recognition from various
social groups but if I had to single out a main social group that it
appeals to I would say teenagers and young adults, I have
represented this social group in particular by the use of
images, layout and the informal language I have used, I believe I
have met all the aspects of a ‘Hip hop’ music magazine and have
represented the particular social group well. My media product
also appeals to social groups through gender and age, for
example the main image I used is of a person that is around the
same age group as my target audience, if used an image of an
older person on the front cover I may not have attracted the
audience I was aiming for or represented their social group. My
media product is unisex as I wanted to attract a larger audience;
by using a young male on the front cover I feel I was able to
attract both genders.
In order to attract this social group I looked at existing products
and carried out research on the internet for various hip hop
artists, after doing this I noticed that there was a stereo typical
view on “hip hop” and I have tried to represent this in my
magazine through the dress code of the person in the main
image, but rather than going fully for the “gangster” look I have
mixed smart clothing with gangster clothing which will hopefully
start a new trend.

4. What kind of media institution
might distribute your media
product and why?
Although there are many leading distribution companies who publish a vast range of
magazine genres, targeting different audiences all around the world, its still not easy to
get your product noticed. Therefore picking the right media institution to publish your
product is no walk in the park, the media institution has the ability to increase or decrease
the revenue of your product dramatically.
The media institution that might distribute my media product (a hip hop music magazine )
would be Bauer Media. The reason for this decision is that Bauer Media is one of the
major worldwide media empire, offering over 300 magazines in 15 countries, as well as
online, TV and radio stations.
Although the founders state that they want to appeal to all the older generation, I still
think there is room for them to expand and reach out to the younger generation as well
as the older generation. Baring that point in mind I think my media product would be
appropriate for Bauer media, as my magazine is targeted at young males and females
whereas Bauer media mainly aim their products at older men.
Due to Bauer being a recognized publisher it means that there will be new opportunities
for me to engage with other media brands. Using opportunities and partnerships
available to Bauer I can use more advertisement options making it both easier and
cheaper to advertise and increase income profits of my media product.
Finding the best distribution market is very important to any media product, Firstly I will
use the common way, famously used by most media institution which is printing of hard
copier of their magazine and displaying them at various popular retail shops and
supermarket I.e. HMV, WHSmith and other newsagents. In this day and age upmarket
superstores such as Asda, Sainsbury and Morrison are becoming the main seller of
magazines which are usually place near the tills and check up point in order to attract
more costumers. With this knowledge it is very essential that I distribute my magazine to
supermarkets to ensure fairly high purchase rate from consumers.

5. Who would be the audience
for your media product?
The audience for my media product
would be teenagers and young
adults, this is because young people are
constantly looking for new trends to
follow so by designing my media product
based on magazines that young people
read already such as Vibe I believe I can
appeal to this audience and hopefully set
a few new trends.

6. How did you attract/address
your audience?
the main image I used is of a person that is around the
same age group as my target audience, if used an
image of an older person on the front cover I may not
have attracted the audience I was aiming for or
represented their social group. My media product is
unisex as I wanted to attract a larger audience; by using
a young male on the front cover I feel I was able to
attract both genders.
In order to attract this audience I looked at existing
products and carried out research on the internet for
various hip hop artists, after doing this I noticed that
there was a stereo typical view on “hip hop” and I have
tried to represent this in my magazine through the
dress code of the person in the main image, but rather
than going fully for the “gangster” look I have mixed
smart clothing with gangster clothing which will
hopefully start a new trend.
I also attracted the target audience by offering a free
CD that comes with the magazine, this helped to attract
the audience as most people tend to like being given
things for free.

7. What have you learnt about
technologies from the process of
constructing this product?
During the creation of my media product, I’ve learnt a lot
about technologies and I must admit they have helped me
a lot to improve my media product, with out them I would
have had great difficulty in creating my product. There are
various technologies that I used to create my product but
I’m only going to name a few of them, I used adobe in
design to put my magazine together, the reason why I
chose adobe in design over every other software is
because its made specifically for the production of a
magazine so by using it I put myself at an advantage, at
first I struggled to use all the different tools but after
asking my class mates and teachers for an explanation of
how to use it I began to get a hang of it. I used adobe
photo shop in order to remove the background from my
main image, again the reason why I used this software is
because it was made specifically for tasks such as this, I
didn’t struggle as much to use this software as I have used
it before. I used the internet in order to search for a special
font to use for my title, obviously this was the easiest
piece of technology for me to use as I’ve been familiarised
with it for a long period of time.

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