The document discusses how the media product addresses and attracts its intended audience. It aims its magazine specifically at young males interested in rap music. To attract this audience, it features a famous rapper on the cover promoting an inside article. The magazine also uses bright colors and edited images in its layout to appear cool and attract readers. It prices the magazine affordably at £3 to appeal to its mostly working class demographic. The magazine's content, style and promotion are carefully crafted to engage its target rap music fans.

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms
and conventions of real media products?
On my front cover I have used
many conventions from other I’ve gone against the
music magazines. The masthead is conventions by having a
at the very top and is in its own plain background. Most
font to make it stand out, it’s magazines have some
surrounded by incentives to buy scenery or special effects,
the magazine like 2 free demo but the way I’ve done it
CD’s, and I’ve listed the names of makes the cover star stand
some fictional rap artists which are out more, which is the main
also incentives in themselves. emphasis of the page. I’ve
kept the colour scheme
down to four colours too.
Apart from this I’ve stuck to
the conventions really,
especially with the colour
scheme that only features
four colours. I've done this to
try and continue the house-
style throughout the whole
page .

2. Contents
Conventions I have used are a The list of contents in the
large image advertising a magazine are displayed down
feature in the magazine, and a the side of the page, all with
banner displaying the word catchy titles for the pages.
‘Contents’. The image is photo This agree s with music
shopped with some lighting magazine conventions, except
effects and the page has its from the fact that there's no
own colour scheme (blue). This explanation of the pages
goes against a convention in contents apart from the
that it doesn't have a similar titles. I did this intentionally
colour scheme to the front to pique the readers interest.
cover, but its own individual Both the images on the page
style. It still has the same cover are edited and have special
star though. I've added in page effects which is also pretty
numbers next to the list of unconventional for a contents
pages so the contents page page.
actually serves its purpose. This
is conventional.

3. I used this paint effect
round the sides of the
page to look cool and
Double page spread
This is called a category heading and gives the reader an idea of the
fill in space.
content on the page.
This is conventional of
On this page I
all magazines.
have a headline,
Edited image,
Caption, I edited this
Magazine logo, image by
page number adjusting colour
and a main and and contrast
secondary levels. I designed
it so the people
article. look normally
coloured (mostly)
These are all but the
conventions I background is
have took from trippy and could
other music be part of an
magazines, and album cover.
I haven't made
any exceptions
on this page. This section in red is a sidebar. It is a
digression from the main article and
provides additional information.
This is common on most feature
pages.

4. How does your media product represent
particular social groups?
My Media product represents young people with a like for rap music, mostly males in
their late teens or early 20’s. The audience is intended to be old and mature
enough to understand the taboo side of rap music, so the magazine is mature in
its appearance.
On the front cover there is a picture of a well-known young rapper (Jimmy). He fits all
the specifications of the target audience and is what most of them aspire to be.
He represents them by wearing popular clothing and posing as a hardman.
Because he’s a famous rapper, seeing his face on the cover should get the
customers buying. He is the biggest image on the page so he will attract the most
attention and draw in the audience with his popularity and the aspects he’s
representing.
When one looks at Jimmy in his expensive clothes and bold pose they think of him
having wealth, success, being hip and audacious. The audience generally admires
these qualities, and the man himself. The picture of him advertises a feature of
him inside the mag and this will get it sold.
The audience will likely want to read about Jimmy because he’s an interesting person
and there’s information about him and what he’s doing at the moment. Beneath
the hardman attitude, Jimmy is subtly a sensitive guy, so he can serve as a role
model for a wide range of people, not just the target audience.

5. What kind of media institution might
distribute your media product and why?
• My magazine would likely have to be distributed by a magazine
only distributor, because of how different magazines are to
other modern media. I found one called IPC media, which puts
out a wide range of magazines, NME being one of them. They
would probably have an interest in my product because it is a
kind of niche that they haven’t covered yet. NME is a music
magazine that is very mainstream, unlike mine. I don’t think
they currently produce a magazine that primarily covers rap, but
this genre is proven to be successful by VIBE magazine in
America. Similar institutions may be looking for my kind of
magazine also, to cover the gap in the market.
• My magazine would be sold be large book and magazine stores
(WHS, Asda) but also small local shops with a magazine rack and
could be sold at rap/RnB gigs at stalls, so there's a wide variety
of output outlets.

6. Who would be the audience for your
media product?
• The audience for my media product would be young men
and teenage males. There may also be a female part to the
audience, but my magazine doesn’t appeal directly to them
because there aren’t many female rappers and there is the
sexualisation of women that comes hand in hand with rap
music. It is a feature of the genre that comes naturally to
my magazine. The people that buy my magazine would be
from the middle – lower class of wealth. This is because the
upper class isn’t typically into music and culture that is
considered ‘street’. I have to bear in mind that the
magazine must be a reasonable price for this reason.
• I think the magazine will appeal to all races, as anyone
could have an interest in rap music. VIBE (another rap mag)
has a predominantly black audience, but this is because
most of its sales are in America, where the rap scene is
almost completely dominated by black gangsters. Here in
the UK it is different, with a lot of white rappers finding
success and breaking into the culture.

7. How did you attract/ address the
audience?
• My magazine has a bright colour scheme but with a typical magazine layout. It looks
professional but at bit whacky so it will attract more readers. The professional aspect
represents the actual writing but it’s always presented in a cool way to make it seem
accessible.
• The web address is advertised in various place so this encourages readers to get more
involved with Brap.
• My magazines price is £3.00, I don’t want it any higher than this or it won’t seem suitable for
my audience
• All my pictures are edited in a way that looks gangster. This fits in with the rap genre and
makes everything seem cool
• My cover lines feature the names of famous rap stars, which attracts the audience because
they should recognise them.
• The writing is down to earth, suitable for the audience and makes the stars seem
inspirational
• The young man on my front cover is the same age as the target audience, and is recognisable
for his fame

8. What have you learnt about technologies
from the process of construction of this
product?
• Before creating my magazine I had never used Photoshop before so it was all new to me.
After learning a few basic tools in Photoshop I was able to start experimenting and finding
out what worked. I had to look at other magazine layouts to get mine right and looking
professional, I didn’t realise how much work actually went into it.
• There are many different ways of doing things in Photoshop and as time went by a found
what worked best for me, making my design work easier. I didn’t realise how advanced
Photoshop was and only used the basic features at first. These included the move tool,
rectangular marquee tool, custom shape tool, text, and the polygonal lasso tool to cut out
people from images. I used a lot of layering to give the look I wanted. Picture editing
techniques I used were cropping and brightness/contrast adjusting. When I had a finished
product, I started learning some advanced features and making changes. One of these was
the paintbrush tool (with custom brushes) I used to add gritty effects round my main feature
page (2 page spread).
• I found Photoshop to be a whole new level above what I usually use for design work, its great
because you can do literally anything with an image and it brought my ideas to life.

9. Looking back on your preliminary task,
what do you feel you have learnt in the
progression from it to the full product?
• Before the music magazine we were set a preliminary task which was to create pages from a
college magazine, which consisted of the front cover and the contents. This was the first work
I had done in Photoshop so I was just getting to grips with its basic features . This reflected in
my college magazine , which consists mainly of images and text and doesn’t really follow the
trends of magazine design. The front cover is ok but the contents page looks rushed and I
struggled to make the text there work with the image I had chosen. I could have aced this
with picture editing skill that I’ve learned now but I didn’t know back then. In comparison id
say my music magazine is definitely more professional, inspired and nicer to look at.
• In the progression from my preliminary task to now I have learned many more skills in
Photoshop and also a lot more about magazine conventions and why they exist. I'm now
pretty confident with Photoshop and will probably use it for other design work at college. I'm
proud of how I started with zero knowledge of Photoshop and got the magazine to where its
at now. I feel the music magazine is a success, as the result of the long work.