This slideshow is an example of some of the repertoire of elements that I will need to think about when creating my Hip Hop magazine. Biggie Smalls is one of the biggest Hip Hop artists of all time. I am attempting to mimic his fashion and style in my magazine as I feel that it best represents the style of Hip Hop. The second slide portrays some of the other top Hip Hop artists and their style. As you can see they wear lots of baggy, oversized clothes and lots of large jewellery, which I will make sure to include in my magazine. This star image displays a ordinary and attainable way of life which makes the artist relatable to their audience, yet while still having an element of power to them.
When creating my Hip Hop magazine I will need to consider all of these aspects to what makes a good magazine. All features such as who to include and what is included in a typical Hip Hop magazine. While at the same time I will need to make mine slightly different to attract audience. The audience will want something different from a typical magazine while still containing repertoire of elements that are necessary such as information on recent songs and interviews with popular artists. My USP is going to be creating a platform in which the community and audience will be able to air their ideas and thoughts on the latest news and releases.
Double H is going to be the name of my magazine as my magazine is going to be based on the genre of Hip Hop. I have chosen this name as it is short and a play on the words Hip Hop which will make it memorable when people hear or see it. This is a word cloud of lots of words associated with the genre of Hip Hop and I think represent what I want to create quite well. My mission statement is ‘ We want to keep people in the Hip world up to date with all things Hip Hop. People fall in love with Hip-Hop and it is our job that they are fully invested in everything Hip-Hop’. This represents the brand well, what it stands for and goals of the brand. The uses and gratification theory contains 4 things that contribute to creating a good magazine. Entertainment – My magazine will be entertaining as it will be pleasing to the eye which creates a vocal point for readers to talk about. Information – The front cover will be full of information of the latest news involving Hip Hop. Personal Identity – The cover star will be wearing clothes that are fashionable which readers can talk about and buy them to reinforce their personal identity. Social Interaction – On my magazine there will be information of a website in which readers can discuss the magazine and express their thoughts.
5 key descriptors to my magazine are
- Urban
- Unique
- International
- Community Based
- Trendy
It is very important to understand the key components of a magazine cover as they are a huge part of whether the magazine is a success or not. All the different components adds to whether the magazine reaches the target audience. We annotated these using our knowledge of the conventions to pick out the key parts such as the masthead, cover lines, main cover line etc.
This knowledge will be beneficial when I make my magazine cover as I will need to know what conventions to follow. I will follow these to make sure my magazine cover looks similar to other magazine covers and will therefore be easily recognized by potential customers.
I chose this magazine to analyse as I thought it was very simple yet still attractive to the audience as the vibrant, neon text stands out and it is the first thing you look at. You could also quite easily decode what type of target audience would be and their psychographics. As you can see I stated that the audience would be young, fun seeking and creative as the target audience are people who enjoy making modern music, which will mostly be young, creative people.
In the future I need to consider things such as the fonts that I use when making a music magazine as it can have a huge impact on the way the magazine is represented. I also need to keep in mind the audience demographics and their psychographics as I need to know who I am making the magazine cover for. For example if I am going to be making a Jazz magazine then the audience are going to be very different and have different interests to someone that would read a Pop magazine.