The magazine represents social groups through its portrayal of the front cover model Rochelle. Rochelle is depicted as a proud, confident young woman through direct eye contact with the camera and reader, implying she is strong and not afraid to stand up for herself. The magazine challenges conventions by featuring a black model, as similar music magazines typically only feature white models or minorities like Michael Jackson who lightened their skin. Rochelle's face is half lit and half shadowed to represent her open and goal-oriented side as well as her ability to rest and care for others. The article language portrays Rochelle positively by discussing her environment without effects on her and her dedication to fans while also needing relaxation.

1. How does your music magazine
represent particular social groups?

2. Representation is based on media language. All media products re-present the real
world to us; they show us one version of reality, not reality itself.
I believe I have represented my front cover model Rochelle as a proud, confident young
woman because I have chosen for her to have direct eye contact with the camera, which in
turn makes her have direct eye contact with the consumer. This direct eye contact also
implies she is not afraid of standing up for herself because she is a strong individual and does
not fear looking people in the eye.
I believe I have challenged the forms of conventions of a music magazine for an Indie
music genre because I have chosen to have a black model on my font cover. Other magazines
that focus on a similar genre of music like NME and Q, when searched on Google, do not
have people from different ethnicities on their front cover. (Shown below in the two screen
grabs) However, when they rarely do have people who are not white on their front cover
they either have someone like Michael Jackson, who bleached his skin white, and Rihanna
who has very light skin.

3. I have chosen to use lighting to create a shadow on half of Rochelle’s face, this
is because I want to represent her to the audience as having two different
characters. The lighter half of Rochelle’s face represents her truthfulness, openness
and the fact she has a very clear direction of where she wants to go as an artist.
However, on the other hand I have used darkness to represent the fact that
Rochelle, although has a busy life, has time to rest and enjoy her life and her fans.
In addition the darkness for Rochelle also represents warmth as she is there for
everyone in her life and tries to be the best she can be.
I also thought carefully about what words I used throughout my double page
spread because I wanted to continue to represent positively. Although Rochelle
smokes and drinks I spoke about how the environment she was in affected me, yet
‘had no effect’ on Rochelle which shows that no matter what, she believes that
‘the show will go on’ and she will not disappoint her fans. She has a job to do and
the job will be done. In addition, I wanted to make sure that Rochelle was relatable
to her fans, in order to do this I said how Rochelle takes her ‘music very seriously’
but also, like any other person, needs to be able to ‘relax and chill out’.