Benedict Mawere evaluated his hip hop magazine by analyzing how it used and developed conventions of real media products. He followed conventions like having a large masthead, pricing and issue numbers. He challenged conventions by featuring three artists instead of one or two, and writing the main article as a paragraph instead of columns. His target audience was young males aged 15-25. Distribution could be through music or game shops. He aimed to attract this audience through urban clothing of featured artists, colloquial language, and an attention-grabbing fiery red masthead. Through this process, he learned skills like using Photoshop and improving layout, but could still work on using more colors and shots for further innovation.

1. Evaluation by Benedict Mawere

2. Inspired by XXL Magazine
Evaluation
Part1 the age of 17
I have chosen three young male artist around
represent each page my magazine wearing urban clothes
(jacket ,necklace/chains ,hats). This is because the
magazine’s target audience mainly young teenagers and
adults between the age of 1 to 25.

3. In what ways does your magazine use, develop
and challenge forms and conventions real
• media product
As you can see from below, I
followed the conventions of
a magazine and made my
mast head huge, red and
fiery so that it stands out (its
in your face) consequently
you can easily remember it
just from seeing it once.
• I developed the convention
by adding a fiery texture to it
to make it more attractive
• Unlike XXL my masthead
dominates the whole upper
section • I tried challenging the
• My colour usage convention by having three
immediately indicates that artist instead of 1-2 artist so
it is a hip-hop based that people would get
magazine.(Red, black, white attracted to at least one of
and grey). the artist even if they do not
• I include a bar code on my like the other two.
front page because it makes • I followed convention by
my magazine look more including the artist name on
realistic and professional. I the page.
placed it on the bottom left
of the magazine like real
magazine would to make
scanning easier.
• Price and issue number are
at the top.

4. contents
• On the content page I
followed the conventional
layout of XXL magazine by
having a picture on the left
writing on the right and
title/mast head on the
upper section.
• The picture and title gives
the content page colour
and makes it look less dull
and boring whilst the
subheading and text below
it maintain the content
page informative.
• I challenged the convention
by allowing my artist to
pose instead of just looking
at the front all the time
making it look like a
modern day trend.

5. DPS
• Like conventional • I used the phrase
magazines I maintained “behind the killa” to
the colour scheme from drag the reader in than
previous pages so that it having long quote like
builds up a reputation of XXL’s. It also supports
being this particular ( my usage of writing too.
“The silver coloured • My choice of image is
magazine” e.g.) one of my artist putting
therefore it keeps up his hands on his head
popularity, in addition facing away from the
to this on a different audience. This gives
issue if I make a sudden “police catching
change to the colour criminal” type situation.
scheme it would make it Consequently this helps
the centre of attention. anchor the phrase
• I created a banner to “behind the killa” and
summarize quickly what rest of the interview.
the interview’s about. • Like XXL I used
• Floating quotes to hook colloquial language to
the reader in. help the audience relate
to text and real life.
I wrote the main body of text in the form of an interview to get the exact quotes from the “killa” himself and how he feels.
I tried challenging the convention by writing my main body of text as a paragraph like a few other magazines I’ve seen
instead of writing it in the conventional column form because personally as an audience to other magazines I have found
to be quite boring to read and too long so I ended up skipping the entire page. Furthermore I used more than one colour
for the font, as a result it look more eye-catching unlike XXL who used just one colour.

6. How does your media product
represent particular social groups?
• To represent my particular target social group I have chosen three young
male artists around the age of 17. My artist are wearing urban clothing
(jacket , necklace/chains and hats). Doing so helps portray and represent
this particular social group well because it shows that young adults at the
present time dress in this certain way.
• I also used colloquial/slang language “hip-hop is on new levelz” to shows
that the majority of young adults do not speak formally most of the time.
Furthermore in my DPS I used “A* S**T” to also show that they quite
often use swear words.
• My colour scheme was mainly black and grey instead of it been rainbow
colored to show that hip-hop is serious and hard rather than friendly and
soft.

7. What kind of media institution might
distribute your media product and
why?
• The media institution that will distribute my magazine are video game
shops or music shops like HMV, iTunes, Game, corner shops or
blockbuster, this is because the majority of my targeted audience regularly
visit these kind of shops making it easy and perfect for distribution.
• I also found Vibe and XXL to be good distributers of music
magazines(80000 magazines a year) but using such institutes would leave
me facing a great deal of competition from similar genre magazines.

8. Who would be the audience for your
media product?
• My target audience would mainly be young adults especially young males
around the age 15-25. This is because I made my language, colour and
layout simple and not too sophisticated but kept a serious “hard hip-hop”
tone. In addition to this if had made it any more complicated the audience
would simple get bored and would not read it.

9. How did you attract/address your
audience?
• I looked at numerous magazines and then researched conventions so that
I knew what type of things would make a particular magazine popular and
attractive.
• As you can see from below, I followed the conventions of a magazine and
made my mast head huge, red and fiery so that it stands out (its in your
face) consequently you can easily remember it just from seeing it once.
.Male artist attract some of the female
audience.

10. What have you learnt about
technologies from the process of
constructing this product?
• From the process of constructing this product I’ve learnt how to use
Photoshop effectively to my advantage e.g. (background, font size and
colour and general effects like shading and lightening).

11. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do
you feel you have learnt in the progression
from it to the full product?
• From the preliminary task leading to the real task I have learnt a great
deal. This includes thing such as:
• Adding colours to my pages
• Cropping images
• Laying them out so they look better.
• In addition to this, I generally learnt how to maintain your magazine and
keeping it looking proffesional.

12. Areas of improves.
• I think that I could have improved on colour usage (used more )to show
Enovation and originality instead of using the same old black, red and white.
• I could have improved a bit on cropping the images.
• I could have used a little more camera shots instead of just using medium and
close up shots.
• I should have maybe used 1 female artist to try to reach out to wider audience
like RNB and Pop