The document summarizes the student's music magazine project "Notorious". The student took influence from real music magazines like Q, VIBE and NME in designing the layout and conventions of the magazine. Key aspects included the front cover design imitating VIBE magazine, and the contents page referencing Q magazine. Feedback was gathered to help decide content and style elements. The goal was to appeal to a wide audience including students, women and different racial groups.

2. “Notorious” music magazine evaluation. My magazine not only keeps most forms and
conventions of real media products but I also took influence from a few different music
magazines (Q, VIBE and NME). For my front cover I kept the obvious features such as a
barcode, masthead, cover lines, main image and top strip. Another aspect of actual
magazines that I wanted to keep was the use of freebies as they are a good selling
technique which helps to expand a magazines demographic.
The front cover slightly imitates VIBE magazine. I have used a mid shot of my musician
that I created called Tamaki Flynn and used the cover lines as a sort of border around her.
The magazine also uses the front cover to represent the article with the main cover
artist, so I made my model use quite an immature pose in order to represent the fact that
she is a young and new artist on the scene.
The contents page was supposed to reference some Q contents pages. Occasionally Q
uses just the one picture and uses the text to curve around the main image. This is how
I’ve tried to make my contents page look, this is because it gives the magazine a
sophisticated and sleek look which are the features I wanted my magazine to include. Q
also use a quote from the main image next to it in order to intrigue the audience into
reading the article. For the contents page I decided not to use the cover model as I
wanted to have a wide range of images in the magazine.
My double page spread has been relatively inspired by NME. I’ve used a pun as the article
title to also make reference to a rap song (‘Straight outta Compton’) which will no doubt
be recognised by my magazines audience, the use of this reference may also give the
impression that this new artist is almost as good as the epic hip hop group ‘N.W.A’. I have
also used a small feature on the far right of the spread to let the readers know what a
famous DJ thinks about my new artist as it would therefore be a trustworthy review that
would influence the magazines audience to listen to her.
I decided to take influence from these magazines as I think that Q and VIBE have a glossy
and sophisticated theme to them that looks attractive. And then NME as it has a playful
appeal to it which humours the reader.

3. However, there a aspects of my magazine which may not be
used in other music magazines. Such as the fact that I didn’t
include all the pages and articles featured in my magazine
in the contents page, I only included the main the regular
slots of the magazine to keep intrigue and not make the
page look too busy. I also didn’t include strip on the front
cover of the magazine as the page looked too ambushed
with a top and bottom strip. I was contemplating whether
to list all the artists that would have been featured in the
contents page because it is a good feature to help the
readers find the bands they are looking forward too, but it
only seemed to work when in a rock music magazine.

4. Whilst making my magazine I had continuous feedback from
my friends and people of the internet (by posting different
surveys). From this I was influenced on what outfits I needed
to put together for my models to wear in order to give outa
relatively realistic impression of what real hip hop stars wear
as from some other pictures I found on the internet for ideas
looked too excessive. From this I too found out what kind of
bands and musicians I should put on the front cover, and
more older stars from the 80s/90s seemed popular (e.g.
Lauryn Hill and De La Soul) and whether having posters on a
Hip-hop magazine would work. I also had help from teachers
in order to decide on the fonts as my wide selection from
fonts on the internet made it difficult to find a few that
matched.

5. Notorious has been aimed at mainly college and university students. I decided this because they are the
main audience of the hip hop and rap genre (although the audience age does go up to around 30) and are
also the age range most likely to be interested in going to gigs and therefore will find the gig listings an
important feature. Using this age range as my target audience helped me to decide on a price (£2.50) for
my magazine as it showed that I should make it affordable for students. If I have a wide audience range it
also means that I can write with a humourous tone of voice as it means that everyone will be interested
(makes it easier to understand for the younger generations reading the magazine and gives it a nice
simplicity for the older audience reading it), and not just a particular group.
This particular issue focused mainly on the strength of women, I did this because there isn’t a lot of
positive female representation in the Hip Hop genre as they are normally shown half naked standing
around men and are usually depicted as “gold diggers”. I wanted to create images and personalities of
female rappers that needed to be admired and seen as a mentor by other women trying to make it in the
industry, or just admired by women overall. Hopefully it could also give a message to men of what women
should be seen as. It also means that women will appeal stronger to the magazine which means that sales
may be higher as it isn’t just aimed at men.
I also want to make sure that this magazine doesn’t focus on a particular race as most music magazines
(such as NME and Q) tend to gain a more white middle class audience, however this is said to be due to
the genre of music which has been seen to not really appeal to many other audience types. This is why I
also wanted to make sure that my models could represent a variety of ethnic groups in order to appeal to
a wider audience.
I made sure the language I used in the article wouldn’t put people off by not trying to use too much (or
any) slang. This may make my audience possibly feel patronised or as if I was trying to hard to make it
relate to a specific culture by using dialect from different parts of the UK that other places might not
understand.
By doing all of this I have tried to create a very mixed audience of students, women and men, and
hopefully a wider racial audience. This isn’t usually done when creating a music magazine.

6. Time Inc would be a good publisher as it publishes and
distributes magazines such as VIBE, a hip hop magazine that
I took great influence from. Although it is an American
company, it distributes widely in the UK. Time Inc owns the
UK magazine house IPC Media, from here they distribute
magazines like NME, this shows that they are interested in
music magazines.
Another company that may distribute Notorious would be
Bauer media group. They publish music magazines such as Q
and Kerrang. Although these magazines may be specifically
rock magazines, a company would be interested in widening
its fan base and demographic.

7. Through making my magazine I have learnt how to use Photoshop
and InDesign on the computer. At the beginning of the project I had
little to no experience, but since then I have learnt how to do things
such as take away the back ground from a picture (which I used
when putting text onto my front cover and contents page). I have
also learnt how to expand a picture without distorting it which was
useful when making my front cover and contents page.
I found using Photoshop to touch up the colours of my front cover
picture too difficult so used a website in order to help me change
the colour and effect. I brightened the colours and put in a cross
process effect as it was originally quite and dull picture. When
comparing the final music magazine with my school magazine it is
clear that I learnt how to use better fonts and how to edit them.

8. After making my school magazine I learnt that sometimes a contents
page with a single big picture will make a magazine look a lot more
glossy. I originally wanted to use a collection of pictures like I did in the
school magazine but it ended up looking quite messy and amateur.
I also learnt how important font can be in terms of giving off a specific
vibe. The fonts used on the school magazine make it look too simple
and it looks too obvious that it was made by a student. This helped as
when I was deciding on a font for the front cover of Notorious the
original graffiti styled font that I wanted to use made the magazine
look too homemade and immature. I then decided that a more
sophisticated and retro font would give the magazine a more stylish
look. I wanted this look for Notorious as I wanted to show the more
chic and glamorous side of hip hop rather than the graffiti and drug
filled culture that a lot of people probably associate it with. I stuck with
the glossy font theme for the contents page and most of the double
page spread as well.