EVALUATION

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

• My magazine front cover page uses and challenges the forms and conventions of real magazines in both the contents page and the front cover page. Elements which are usually found on a front cover page of a music magazine would include a selling line, cover line, cover story, the corporate identity, the image of the artist, dateline, website, price and barcode which is what I included in the front cover page of my magazine. However, I challenged the conventions of a front cover page by including an image that supports the main image which will add interest to the target audience as they will believe that there is more information to come since there is a supporting image with a cover story showing an insight of what is to feature.

• My contents page also follows conventions of what most music magazines contains which are cover stories which anchors the image in relevance, folios which are used to make my audience find the article they want to read quicker, features which allows the reader to find out what stories are going to be inside the magazine and the title being "contents" at the top of the page. I transgressed the conventions of a contents page by applying two supporting images alongside the main image as I thought that the images would grab my target audience's attention a little bit more due to the pictures containing people who are of their age range.

• Both my front cover and contents page contains colours and fonts which are compatible with the hip-hop genre as the colours included red (mainly), white and black which symbolises danger and a lot of hip-hop artists refer to themselves as dangerous. The fonts I used predominantly for both pages was the "impact" font which is the corporate identity of magazine as the magazine name is written in this font. Impact is straightforward and would attract my target audience's attention as reflect seriousness and not anything that is immature since it does not feature any fancy fonts and it would not appeal to an feminine audience because the colours used connotes danger, whereas pink and white would signify femininity and purity.

• The DPS adopts conventions of real media products as well as the front cover page and the contents page. It uses a heading, a subheading, an article of an interview between a rapper and the writer of the article, the byline, photo credit and the main image which sits on the first page of the spread with no other images supporting it. The key conventions I did not include was a dropcap since I believed that the readers would know where the article will start from as the questions are written in an orange colour with the answers being written in white. I also did not include a pull-out quote since my subheading contains a quote which comes from the interview so I believed I could've conserve more space on the spread that way.

Usually hip-hop magazines will include just one image of an artist with a dedicated cover-line supporting it (which is shown on the source magazine) thus making the reader able to know that the story based on the rapper is the most important in the magazine.

I challenged the conventions of the front cover page by adding a supporting image which assists the main image which will help the reader understand that the supporting image is also relating to an important story. The supporting image also distributes more information for the reader to consume.

Both The Par’s front cover page and the Source’s front cover page consists of the colour red on both the masthead and the cover line which is a colour that could be seen as generic with the hip-hop genre as it connotes blood, danger and love.

The V magazine contains a main image which is typical of a magazine’s contents page. I opposed this by including two supporting images on the contents page to show how the conventions of a magazine contents page could be challenged. The images would grab my target audience's attention a little bit more due to the pictures containing people who are of their age range.

The colour used on the contents page is similar to the colour used on the front cover page. I did this to keep the corporate identity recognisable throughout the first two pages of the magazine.

The fonts I used predominantly for both pages was the "impact" font which is the corporate identity of magazine as the magazine name is written in this font. Impact is straightforward and would attract my target audience's attention as reflect seriousness and not anything that is immature since it does not feature any fancy fonts and it would not appeal to an feminine audience because the colours used connotes danger, whereas pink and white would signify femininity and purity

My media product (similarly to the real product I researched) challenges conventions by using a pull-out quote as my subheading which I done deliberately to conserve more space on the second page of the DPS so I could allocate more space for the interview.

Key conventions such as the heading, the subheading, the article of an interview between a rapper and the writer of the article, the byline and the photo credit are developed alongside the main image which sits on the first page of the DPS with the second page comprising text.

How does your media product represent particular social groups

Young adults and teenagers are represented through the main image of the magazine consisting artists which are of that age range. This social group would feel that because the images consists of young adults/teenagers the magazine relates to them because their lifestyle may be adjacent to the artist’s lifestyle. Most of the artists in the hip-hop genre come from the inner-city suburban areas so they would most probably have a large following coming from these areas. The interview within the article of the double-page spread shows how the inner-city areas are represented which is through slang. Many of the people consuming the product would be avid slang speakers and would relate and have a interest in the product. The young adults should share an interest in hip-hop music and they should have a decent knowledge about the genre. The audience would be attracted to artists of their age range so I included hip-hop artists of their age to represent them.

• The teenagers in the photograph are represented through in my product because I

included artists which are of there age group. The rapper on the main image is part of the same social group as the teens.

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

• Media institutions that may distribute my product would be all good record stores e.g.Virgin Megastores since it is a shop which sells music records. Whilst my target audience is looking for a hip-hop CD, they could come across a hip-hop magazine which they'll be instantly attracted by since they are interested in the hip-hop genre already.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

• The age of my target audience for my product would roughly be between 15-28 since I am attracting teenagers and young adults. The photos and stories I will be using within the magazine would all be based on young rap artists so my target audience would feel intrigued as they will feel that the media product relates to them.

• The hip-hop genre contains rappers who are from the inner-city suburban areas and they would see themselves as a product of their environment. Many of my target audience may support their favourite artists since the rappers came from the same area as some of my target audience so I would be attracting young people from inner-city areas.

• The target audience for my magazine are young adults and teenagers who are from the inner-city areas. The teenagers in the photo looks like my intended audience through the clothes they are wearing e.g. hoodies which stereotypes what area they are from.

How did you attract/address you audience?

I addressed my target audience by including a catchy selling line "THE UK'S MOST DIVERSE HIP-HOP MAGAZINE" which would attract my audience as they would believe that this magazine is the biggest hip-hop product in the UK. The cover line would also help address my audience as it is written in a quite large font size "UNORTHODOX" and they would be attracted to story and would purchase the product to unravel what is inside the story. The main image and the supporting image both consists of well-known hip-hop artists and this will attract my target audience through their popularity and talent.

• My target audience would be attracted to my product as they would believe that this magazine is the biggest hip-hop product in the UK by looking at the selling line.

•The cover line would appeal to the audience as the font size is quite large and easily noticeable. Plus, it is written in the colour red so it s is quite bright and bold which makes it stand out.

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing the product?

• I have learnt how to use the key features of Adobe Photoshop and InDesign effectively to create my product. I used InDesign to construct my product and the features which I found made it successful was the "rectangle tool" which I used to input images, "strokes" which outlined the text on both my contents page and front cover page to make it stand out and show importance and "columns" which I used to structure where my article will be place on the double-page spread.

• I used Photoshop to modify my selected images and the tools which helped me do so was the "crop tool" to cut parts of the images that I did not need out. I also brightened my images if they were too dark.

Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

• When I started the preliminary task, I didn't fully understand how to use Photoshop and did not at all understand how to use InDesign. However, I spent more of my free time using the softwares and eventually understood how to use them. I have progressed from being a novice with these softwares to being comfortable using them so I believe that the my main task has work which is huge in contrast to the preliminary task although I felt that the preliminary task was helpful in making me use the softwares effectively.

The contrast between my preliminary work and main task work

The main task’s contents page looks far more established than the preliminary task because I was more comfortable with using the softwares. I learnt from the mistakes I made when creating the contents page of the preliminary task

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