1. Appearance
I set out the location of my photos both indoor and outdoor as I wanted to experiment which
would have the best results, I used two friends as models in an outdoor location and one in an
indoor, I felt that the outdoor location photos gained the best results as the lighting was better
and the styling therefore decided to use all three in my contents page but the outdoor location
photo as my main photo throughout my magazine pages. I didn’t include any props in the
photo-shoot, because I didn’t want any distractions in the image as I wanted the to be quite
simple. I chose to take some of my photos in a street in Camden where there was graffiti on
the walls and quite dirty, and for my other images I chose my garden as a ‘simple’ location, it
was filled with plants and flowers and kind of averted from the hip hop genre therefore I chose
the graffiti location photos as my main because I felt that audiences could spot immediately
the genre of my magazine from the images. The costumes for the photos, I put together by
creating a mood board and researching images for girls that would denote hip hop. I chose
gold chains, dungarees and camo jacket for the bedroom photo-shoot, and a urban print shirt
and some denim shorts for the Camden photo-shoot and just a beanie hat, denim
waistcoat, boots and shirt for the garden photo-shoot. I felt that all these images gave off a ‘hip
hop’ vibe yet was still feminine therefore relating to both genders in my target audience base.
2. Target Audience
I had to develop a target audience base before creating my magazine so I can be clear on
who my magazine was targeting and how to make that clear and to set out the photo-
shoot, costume, location and colour scheme. I conducted audience research in order to get
feedback from a target audience on their perspectives on real magazines which relate to my
genre and the positives and negatives the magazines have and how it could be bettered. My
audience felt that hip hop magazines should include both mainstream and underground
artists, so they get both in one magazine and not have to buy two separate magazines. They
felt that my magazine should include upcoming concerts, exclusive interviews on big artists
at the moment, ‘lyrics of the week’ a feature which I added on my contents page. They said
that they liked how I included a ‘FREE DRAKE CD’ puff on the cover as that would attract
them to buy it, thus increasing the profit.