My Magazine

My Front Cover

My Contents Page

Analysing Music Articles

Music artist Gary ‘GZA/Genius’ Grice is featured in this article, so straight away you are able to know that it’s a hip hop magazine because it’s a hip hop artist. And also you can tell from the picture that it’s a hip hop magazine.
The language used is simple and sometimes street e.g. ‘You’re proud to remain true to your ethics.’ This is because hip hop is their main music genre and they have to appeal to their target audience e.g. ‘Pure Genius’ and ‘No the GZA, no Wu-Tang – It’s that simple. Yet the clan’s elder statesman still has creativity to burn…’
The colour used is simple and not so bright, it suits with the picture. Mostly black and white then red is used to highlight main words like the question, this is also useful to keep the reader in track so they don’t loose themselves in the paragraphs.
The style of the text is simple and easy to read, the questions and others are bolded to stand out. And the three main attractions of the article are made in a different font to stand out even more like the headline ‘Pure Genius’, the first letter of the article ‘H’ and the lead quote ’’It’s frustrating seeing rappers talk…’’. These are used to attract the reader’s eye, make them stop and read the article. Especially the lead quote, it gives the reader a bit of what is in the article to keep on reading.
It is a double page article, one side of the double page is used for the writing and the whole other page is used for the picture. This makes it look more interesting and quicker to read than seeing a double page for writing and possibly a small picture on the side.The tone used when addressing the reader in this magazine is as an informed intelligent fan, because in the interview the discussion is very clear and straight to forward. They are having a quite smart talk between each other about his point of view about rapping and his music.
The artist presented to the audience through the image is simple and quite smart, he seems confident about himself and what he does and he looks very independent.
The style of the article matches the style of the front cover because the picture on the front cover is also simple not bright and quite black and white, it keeps this quite professional look possibly throughout the magazine. On the front cover the main colours are red, yellow and black, an don the article the red and black theme is still kept so if you would look at lots of covers and articles mixed together you would be able to spot this one together. Also the text font is quite similar, so it makes the front cover and the article look alike.The article demands prior knowledge mostly for teenagers because people he talks about like ‘Slick Rick’ is an artist in 80’s, so teenagers would not know what the artist is talking about so they would need to know who he is talking about to be able to understand what he’s talking about. Elders adults that wore/are into hip hop/rapping would possibly know what the artist is talking about and would be able to understand what he means. Also young readers wouldn’t know what Wu-Tang is, they wouldn’t know that it’s a rappers group of 20 or 30 people. So this article wouldn’t be interesting to teenagers without any prior knowledge.




The language used is quite formal and informative e.g. ‘RIGHT NOW, clubbing is not ‘green’. The average medium- sized dance club uses 150 times the energy of a typical household and produces around 12,000 litres of glass to recycle from each weekend.’ Uses this information as a fact, this in figures would most likely to make the reader understand how bad this is. This also shows that he uses formal language so this article is taken seriously, and not just read for a joke. This also suits the target audience which are elders from 18 years old to possibly early 30’s. The audience is based at this age group because clubbing is mostly from 18 years old or even 21 years old.
There are lots of different bright colours used in this article to attract more of that type of audience, to make them glance the page and read it. But the article itself is more serious and plane, so the audience actually realise what clubbing does to the world.
The style of the text used for the headline ‘Rave the Planet’ is quite funky to catch more audience to the article just like the first letter of the article ‘R’ to persuade more people to read the article, but the rest of the article is in simple text that is easy to read and understand.
Pictures in this article are important and they take up probably a full page, but they laid it out on both of the pages to make the article seem quite quick to read. The pictures are sized well to fit the pages, and it’s mostly the pictures on this article that attract most of the attention.
The tone used in this article is like a member of an “in” crowd because the article is taking to a certain people that go clubbing, it describes detailed with lots of facts like ‘The full sized dance floor in the basement of WATT cost around £162,000 to build’. This article informs the reader so the reader don’t need any general knowledge to understand the article, all the information about the theme of this article is all put in there.
All the images used are showing people having fun, the meaning through that is how people are all there having fun not realising what they are doing to the world. Then there is a picture of a toilet that measures how much water is in the toilet and it says on the picture ‘The rainwater toilets: Flush with success’ suggesting to recycle, and also there is an image of a big smile covering few pictures (like its more important) with recycling symbols as eyes.
The style of the article really matches the front cover of the magazine through the matching colours and nearly same text font, the colours are so alike and some of the text font is still kept simple and easy to read.
The article doesn’t need any prior knowledge because it’s an informative article so everything is clearly explained in figures and other people’s point of view e.g. ‘“When I go clubbing I want to have fun, drink beer and look at girls. Clubbing don’t care about the environment. Besides,” He adds, “if a club doesn’t play cool music, then nobody will go.”’ This article has everything you need to know about what going clubbing does to the world, and it’s laid out very well because it doesn’t have biased views. It has facts and lot’s of other peoples true opinions, to show the reader what people that go clubbing and people that don’t think about this problem.

Quesstionaire Results

What age group are group are you?
14 - 16: 7
17 - 19: 3

What gender are you?
Female: 8
Male: 2

What type of music are you into? [You can choose more than one]
R&B: 10
Hip Hop: 7
Grime: 5

Do you buy magazines? [If yes, write the name below]
Yes: 7
No: 3

There wore a wide range of magazines that people buy e.g. OK, Black Beauty, Elle etc

If you buy magazines how often?
Weekly: 2
Fortnightly: 4
Monthly: 1
None: 3

What would attract your eye the best to make you want to buy that certain magazine?
There wore all different types of things people liked e.g. The sell line, The main image, Bright colours etc

If you could make your own magazine, what would you call it?
There wore things like Fashion vs Music, Rhythm, Breeze, Starz etc

How much would you be prepared to pay for a music magazine?
£1.00: 2
£1.50: 6
£2.00: 2

In a music magazine, would you like to be updated with all the things going on in artists life's?
Yes: 9
No: 1

Are you more likely to buy a magazine that has:
Free Goods
Posters
Stickers
Interviews
CD's
Than just normal magazine?
Yes: 10
No: 0

Evaluation of Britney Spears

The image is a top shot of Britney lying down, this makes her look attractive and still young and sexy with the phone and the teletubbie in her other hand. A sexy, cute shot has been used because to attract more customers, also a lot of people like Britney and that’s why cute has to be a part of the main image. Rolling Stones uses a lot of celebrities as a sex image on their cover, most of the time the celebrities have hardly anything on. However in this image their still keeping her age in mind.

Britney’s costume suggest that she’s not that good young girl, this appeals more to teenage boys or even men. Her image attracts boy’s eye, especially because she is a famous singer. Also her costume does not flesh a lot of her body as usually the magazine would have, she’s still 17 year old girl.

In the image there is a telephone and a teletubbie in her other hand, this shows that even though she’s undressed she still has the cute side of her inside her.

Bright and sharp settings are used to make her body look sexier and toned, this makes the image look more attractive. And also the sharpness makes the darker parts darker so where it’s bright it’s brighter and where it’s dark it’s darker.
The intertextual reference is the teletubbie because there is an actual children’s show about them, this shows that a 17 year old girl that is going through the stage of being a girl to a woman. The woman symbol is the underwear and bra she’s wearing.

The colours used are pink, black, purple and lilac. The pink represents the girly side of her, the black represents the elegant/grown up side of her. Purple and lilac represents the sexy side, the purple/lilac silk material makes her stand out and makes the image more sexy.






A side shot of her has been cropped to make her shape look sexier, which will attract more customers. There are no other images or anything in the background, so the attention is focused on her.

This time Britney’s not wearing much, only underwear showing that she is a grown woman. Her leaning against the wall with her backside leaning out makes her backside look bigger and her chest leaning against the wall makes her chest have more tone, this makes her shape look perfect, skinny and toned. With that pose she is aiming to have a sexual tension with the reader.

Bright settings are used to make her look sexier and toned, a bit of softness is also used to make the image took a bit like a dream or an illusion. These settings make her look all perfect, this attracts mostly men.

The lighting is used just from the right side so there is brightness and a bit of shading to give her a bit of tone.

White and a bit of light pink, only these colours are used to make her stand out and look like a perfect woman from dreams and to make it look simple, this makes her look more naked.





This image has been chosen because Britney has been through a lot and she’s trying to come back, so she wants a close relationship with the reader in a simple way. The picture being black and white shows the coldness and the sadness of what she is going through.

The image is cropped really closely of her face, and from her face you can tell that she’s sad and also in the picture she’s not looking how she used to look before. She used to look like a diva, always looking perfect. However in this picture is showing how she has changed, no makeup makes her look more plane with the black and white effect.

She wants a personal, simple and close relationship with the audience, for the audience to understand what she is going through, what she’s been through and instead of judging her she wants the audience to get to hear her side of the story first. ‘Britney Spears, inside an American tragedy’ straight away goes with the sad picture of her, it makes you feel sorry for her and by buying the magazine you could find out the story from her and what she’s going through in person.

Research For My Magazine

The History of R&B
During the Civil War many slaves occupied their time by composing their own music. Slaves sang about their emotions, the difficult present, the past, and hopes for the future. Rhythm and Blues is perhaps most commonly understood as the term used to describe the sophisticated urban music that grew out of the urbanization of the blues which began in the 1930s.
As early as the mid 1950s, it was unclear whether the term R&B could really be ascribed to any one particular form. More appropriately perhaps, it came to be associated with black popular music that was not overtly aimed at the teenager, distancing itself from the newly emerging rock. One of the major advances

for the genre was the development of an R&B roster within Atlantic Records, whe

re Ahmet Ertegun(who died in 2006) and Jerry Wexler, along with engineer Tom Dowd, proved instrumental in shifting R&B to a wider audience.
The many artists of the 1930's to the 1970's include: Louis Jordan, Joe Turner, Ruth Brown, Ray Charles, Chuck Willis, Bobby Bland, and B. B. King. Many of the great R&B artists have made pure history with their music and there are many new artists following in their footsteps.

The History of Hip Hop
Hip-hop music or rap music is an admired and famous style or genre of music in the USA. This well-known music genre is made up of two components, rapping and record scratching

. Rapping is also known as MCing and DJing, which comprises of audio mixing. These two main components combined with graffiti and break dancing form the four core elements of hip-hop.
Hip-hop was initiated as a cultural movement by inner-city youth, mostly Latinos, Hispanics, and African Americans in New York City, in the early seventies. The word "rap" was derived in the sixties, from a slang word that meant conversation.
Hip-hop has two main historical eras, the old school hip-hop era from 1970-1985 and the golden age hip-hop era from 1985-1993. The golden age of hip-hop began only when it entered the mainstream of music and it consolidated the sounds of the West Coast and the East Coast.
The origin of hip-hop music is from African American and West African music. Contributions of griots like The Last Poets, Jalal Mansur Nurriddin, and Gil Scott-Heron were significant in a big way for the advent of hip-hop in the 1960s. Hip-hop had originally begun in the Bronx. Funk and soul music were played a lot in block parties. In the beginning, the DJs at these parties began separating the percussion breaks from hit songs. They started realizing that these breaks were more entertaining and groovy. This technique had become widespread in Jamaica and had spread considerably in the New York community via the Jam

aican immigrants.
Kool DJ Herc and Grandmaster Flash were the pioneers in the hip-hop industry and other DJs had extended the short percussion interludes of funk records and created a more danceable sound. As a result, remixes had become popular with the advent of mixing and scratching techniques. Many styles of hip-hop had developed in the golden age of hip-hop.
At present, hip-hop is enjoyed all around the world. In spite, of all the controversies created by hip-hop artists they are still growing in number. Hip-hop music is sold all over the world in stores and even online.

The History of Grime

Grime is a music that was born in E

ast London and lives in East London... and maybe only makes sense in East

London. It is a mutt genre, a bastard b

lend of street English, Jamaican dancehall reggae and two kinds of rave music:
1. Drum ’n’ bass, an electronic party monster built from breakbeats, or loops fashioned from the percussive “breakdown” sections of other songs;
.2. A U.K. delicacy called garage, which rhymes with carriage and feels like R&B running a fever. The sum is a fast clatter of syncopated claps, alien chirps and machine

bursts. Grime vocalists resemble turbo-charged rappers, racing to match backing tracks that thump about 130 times per minute — near your target heart rate for vigorous physical activity. Wiley, the musician and party promoter credited with inventing grime, calls it “eski” — short for Eskimo, short-hand for emotional coldness. Grime is clean and steely but filthy and ragged, all at once, like battlefield surgery. It is young, rebel music, with more songs about survival than love. Many popular grime artists are teenagers raised in East London’s low-income council estates. Sometimes their performances end in ultra violence, a tradition carried forward from the garage scene. Grime lyrics are laced with taunts directed at rival MCs; grime concerts are organized as contests, or clashes, between competing crews. On nights with bad voodoo in the air, the clashes can turn to riots.

Font Cover Evaluation of 2 Magazines

Rolling Stone is a United States based magazine devoted to music, politics, and popular culture. This makes it a perfect magazine because it has everything you need to be updated with like music, politics, and popular culture all in one.
This magazine would attract a lot of customers because of the front cover model that the magazine has chosen, Amy Winehouse has is a really good singer to some people but others hate her because of the things she does. However everybody wants to know what she’s been up to now, so quite a lot of customers would buy that just to be updated with the gossip.

A lot of people will want to find out why is Giuliani worse than Bush, this would be aiming at nearly everyone. The people that disagree with Bush will want to know is there anyone worse than him and the people that agree with Bush would be wondering why is he that bad and why is Giuliani worse.

‘The diva & her demons’ make people curious who are her demons, and because Amy Winehouse is the main attention here this shows that everything about her will be in the magazine. So for all the fans is a must buy magazine and for the people who hate her might still even buy it just to find out all about her.

This Rolling Stones magazine does not have many teasers next to it, that’s because the whole attention is based on Christina Aguilera all naked and only covering up with a guitar, this would really attract men’s attention especially the rock or pop fans. Seeing Christina naked with an electric guitar is like their dream come true. The way is edited has made her look extremely attractive and the red silky background has made her stand out of the page, all it says at the bottom ‘Christina Aguilera; inside the Dirty Mind of a Pop Princess’. That’s all it takes to get people to buy it, the ‘Dirty Min’ and ‘Pop Princess’ both have starting of a capital letter which makes it very clear what could be inside.

Evaluation Of My Draft Magazine

This is the magazine I produced:

To make it I had to take a picture with a digital camera, upload it on the computer, open it on the ‘Adobe Illustrator’, edit it however I want the front of my magazine to be and add whatever I want on it to show what’s inside.
I added text and star shape for the headline of my magazine, a ‘G’ and a ‘star’ as a shape but the shape meaning as a word ‘star’ so it’s called ‘G [star]’. Then I just took some pictures from internet and put them as a teaser, with short explanations just to explain exactly what’s inside the magazine.
After I took a bar code from internet put it on the cover and put the price on top, because when people find a magazine they like they and want to purchase they mostly are searching for the barcode to find out the price because it’s usually is found right next to the bar code. I also used a lot of bright colours so it would attract everybody’s eyes against the competition of magazines.

To improve the look of my magazine I think I would spend more time editing the picture and maybe even deleting the background, so the whole attention is based on the people on the cover.
The headline of my magazine is not really that basic to understand so to improve on it I think I would write in small letters and in brackets ‘[star]’, somewhere in the middle of the star so then everyone would understand what is meant by ‘G [star]’.
I would also add more information on what’s inside, and add a big teaser like ‘Secrets of looking good’ or ‘How to find the perfect man’ which would attract more girls to my magazine because everyone would be curious.
And if I got time I could also think about something unique I could put on my magazine to attract more customers.

Contents Page Analysis

The front of the magazine should stand out more, maybe use some colours just like on the contents page. The contents page is quite boring, the audience are rock fans, emos, Goths…etc. The audience would want something more exiting and sharp… the structure of the contents page is set out neatly in order, just from the pictures you can straight away tell that it’s a rock magazine.
The style of the magazine is quite simple with hardly any bright colours, which is more aimed at the target audience but maybe sometimes they could use a bit of colours. The pictures on the page are quite big, this draws the audience attention more that writing. They use not a lot of writing, which is good cause customers don’t like a lot of writing they prefer pictures more. To stand some of the text they have written it in bold in yellow on a black background, which attracts the eye as well because there aren’t so many colours on the page and that has colours which makes it stands out more.
Some of the text on the contents actually matches up with some of the text on the front cover, like ‘ENTER SHIKARI’ and all the ‘PLUS!’ bits as well. All of them are written in capital letters which is quite common on the contents page.
The information is organised very simple for the audience, this shows that the audience their aiming for does not want to sit there and read a magazine full of writing. They prefer more pictures, posters, interviews… they like most their information to be on bands and things like who’s performing live. The main things they like is on the ‘This Week’ column, where the information is put down very simply and the pages are right next to them.
There are quite a lot of promotional features such as:
- ‘Fall out Boy to play exclusive K! Show!’
- Free posters
- ‘PLUS!’ extra bit at the bottom
- Live reviews
- Album reviews
- Gigs…
However the magazine doesn’t have any graphic features to draw the reader’s attention, maybe they should use that seasonally to get a bit more profit.
The magazine logo is at the top of the page, behind one of the band members of the main image. The font of the logo is unique so when you see it you straight away know which magazine it is, however I think it would stand out more if the colour would be brighter because now the band member gets most of my attention than the logo.
On the contents page there is a franchiser in a red box at the bottom on the right side promoting their delivery service, this would attract more of the magazines fans to get their magazine delivered to their home.
The contents page relates a lot to the front cover, because they try and keep most of the text the same and also the colours. They have about 5 main colours they use on both of the pages, this is quite good because if they used different ones it would be unique but not relevant.