When crating my Double Page Spread, I will need to ensure that I keep in mind all of the aspects to Hip Hop in mind to try to replicate a Hip Hop artist the best I can. In this shoot, I have chosen to represent the Hip Hop artist as a more relaxed person in this shoot to try to get a relatable feel. Hopefully this will attract more readers as they will be able to relate to the outfit and the style of the artist. The aim of the second shoot is to hopfeully get some good photos which I can use on my double page spread and also in my magazine either on the front cover or on the contents page

 

This is a Biography on James Lavelle, who is a British DJ, record producer, and founder of the record label Mo’ Wax. He is best known as the co-creator of the UNKLE project, which has released several albums and singles since its inception in the 1990s. A biography should contain information on their journey to where they are today as this is the main focus of the article, which this one does along with a quote on his journey and his struggles. He states that he struggled financially and what he went through to get where he is today.  This Biography took place because James Lavelle wished to show why his recent release is the way that it is, showing the struggles that he has been through over the years. The article was released not long after he published his recent album so that people were talking about it and it was a hot topic. An indirect biography which is not very reliable as the information is gathered from other sources which may be untrue. James Lavelle takes up over half of the page which attracts consumers which know him and are interested in his story. There is also a brief summary of the biography in bold which people will read first as it is more attracting. People will read this and may be intrigued and wish to carry on reading.

In conclusion, The article is structured well and will attract an audience that is interested in James Lavelle and and want to know what the rest of his story. In future, I will need to think about this and how I will attract the desired target audience into reading my article and all the ways in which I can do so.

Based off of this peer assesment I have made some targets for myself when creating my final draft of my contents page,

• Change the font of cover lines to make it more readable
• Add in more cover lines to provide more information
• Make the masthead stand out more as it is quite dark in the current position, perhaps switch the black and white contrast with the dark background
• Fill in empty spaces around the star image as there is lots of empty spaces

Click on these slides to see inspirational contents pages along with some hand drawn mock ups of what my contents page could potentially look like.

These slides contain some inspiration as to what a contents page in a magazine should look like. The Second slide consists of some hand drawn mock ups which I will consider using as a template for my contents page.

This is my first draft of my Front cover for my magazine. Some things that I thought went well is the framing of the shot as I believe that it presents the model well and is well suited to the hip hop genre as the model looks menacing and edgy. I used a variety of shots with different angles and distances and I decided on this one because the close up presents how a hip hop artist would be very aggressive and fierce.

5 targets that I would follow for my second draft would be

• make sure that the text works well together
• more emphasis on the jewellery
• more information about the contents of the magazine
• don’t change the colour of the cover star and keep them as they are originally
• change where the main cover line is as it is competing with the masthead.

This is a contact sheet for my first shoot where I took around 80 photos of my model. They consist of three different outfits and plenty of different poses and props used to portray the genre of Hip Hop. I think that it went quite well in that I have many different photos to choose from. One thing that I struggled with is the lighting. It took me a while to get the flash to the right setting so that my model’s face was not too bright. However I think that there are many photos that I will be able to use in my magazine. Next time I will ensure that I get the lighting correct to make more of the photos usable.

This is one of my favourite photos from the shoot and one that I will most likely use. I like it because all of the jewellery is on display and I think that I got the lighting perfect for this photo. The mise-en-scene used represents the Hip Hop genre well and this was my favoutie outfit of the few I used aswell.

This was also one of my favourites from the first shoot as again all the jewellery was well presented and contrasts well on the white T shirt. However I may not end up using this photo as the lighting was too low in my opinion. Also, I used a white T shirt on a white background so this may be difficult to cut out on photoshop.

Using the mood board for my star image, I have thought about each element of mise-en-scene. I have tried to keep to the conventions of the genre, but also added other elements into my representation to make my cover stand out. Based on my ideas, when I am shooting, I will adjust the other elements of media language, acting, lighting to make the best overall composition.

This is a dating profile for a typical reader of my magazine. It includes their interests and what type of life that they are looking for. It shows what they enjoy doing and what they want for the future.

When creating a piece of media it is essential to understand who you are making it for, this is called your target audience. This target audience is typically found through surveys based on different demographics, such as age or gender. To help me better understand this audience, I created a dating profile for who I think my target audience is.

I will need to consider Blumler and Katz’s uses and gratification theory.  This is the theory that quality media should have 4 needs of the consumer, entertainment, information, social interaction and personal identity. For example, for information, I could create a column on new and upcoming songs and artists in the Hip-Hop genre.

These are some surveys on Hip Hop fans and who they are

I think that the Masthead is one of the most important features of a magazine as These are some of the masthead that I designed in InDesign. They use different fonts and sizes. I knew that I wanted my Masthead to be black as I didn’t want too many colours on my front cover so I decided to keep the colours neutral. For my final font I have picked the top one. I feel this is a conventional yet effective font as well as bold and not too distracting. It is large and eye-catching but not too much. When looking to make my magazine, this task has helped me to decide upon conventional elements for my magazine.

I liked the look of most of these front pages of Hip Hop magazines purely because there was not loads of text taking over and the image was very much the main attraction. Also, without lots of other text I think it makes the front cover looks a lot cleaner and more appealing in my opinion. Covers such as the XXL covers consist of lots of information of what is inside the magazine which is useful, yet I think it makes the cover look cluttered and hectic. Whereas ones such as L’aumo have not so much text or make the text not as big and blends in more with the theme of the magazine and it does not make the cover look as hectic as some of the others. I also very much liked the L’aumo magazine cover as the colours complimented each other well along with the Respect magazine cover. One of the magazines, Nataal, is unconventional as it has no information as to what is inside the magazines. However, I think this works as it makes the cover look a lot cleaner in my opinion and is very appealing. This will be essential in my magazine cover as I want to make it as appealing as possible. Along with that there are many other conventions that I will want to incorperate in my magazine such as the sans-serif mastheads.