• THE SOURCE uses colours a lot in their issues, they tend to match the colour of the masthead to the colour of the cover lines as you can see from the examples on the left.

• The fonts they use tend to be very simple but they work very well.

• The main images tend to be a medium close up shot from the waist up and close up shots.

• The green issue was released recently, and was released because of the recession that has hit the U.S and also the UK, the main image is Busta Rhymes lighting his cigar with money, also notice everything in the shot is green (clothes, money, scarf, cover lines, and masthead) this is because money was the main issue that was being discussed and a point they want to get across.

• On the left hand side of the magazines you can see a lot of information, this is because when THE SOURCE is on the shelves in stores people will only see that left hand side, which means they want the cover lines to be on show so that people will gain interest.

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• XXL is my personal favourite, and is also the most well known Rap/R&B magazine.

• The masthead is extremely simple, a red box with XXL in basic capitals, this makes them one dominant over the other magazine to me because they are easier spot when they are on the shelves and if you see a bit of red with a white X in it you know 100% that its XXL Mag.

• They never ever change the colour of their masthead it has always been red and white, unlike other magazines who may change the colour for a special issue, the only time it has been different was the XXL text was filled with diamonds for a 10th anniversary of the magazine as shown on the issue in the middle.

• The cover lines again like THE SOURCE are placed out on the left hand side so that people can easily see what this months magazine has to offer.

VIBE• VIBE Magazine is again a Hip-

Hop/R&B/Rap magazine, it looks at artists from T.I. to Chris Brown to Ciara, so covers a wide range of the music industry, but this magazine isn’t totally focused on music, it also discusses Movies & Celebrity gossip.

• Like THE SOURCE magazine VIBE matches the colour of their masthead to the colour of their models clothes and also the cover line colours, 2 great examples of this are the T.I. and Kanye West issues.

• The design of VIBE is very simple and easy to look at, they a lot give you a lot of information on the front page, this is good because if you know more about what’s in the magazine the more you will want buy it and read on.

Circulation Figures

• I couldn’t find any figures for XXL, THE SOURCE or VIBE.

• VIBE has closed down due to financial issues which shows they couldn’t have very good sales, this knocked XXL up to the top R&B/Rap magazine but because of the genre this magazine can’t compete with Q, NME, Kerrang etc. THE SOURCE is also not selling many issues this year due to bankruptcy last year and are now in new ownership, along with XXL who went through the same problems.

Selling Schemes

• This was an idea back in 2007 that XXL Magazine made a lot of profit from, they used the top rapper in rap at the moment ‘Lil Wayne’ they issued 3 of the same issues but with a different main image on each one, this made people want this collection of 3 magazines simply because it was Lil Wayne, XXL must of made a lot of money of this idea because at that time and still Lil Wayne is at the top of career and he can only go further.

• I’m sure this isn’t the first time a magazine has done this but it’s a very clever idea and also looks great when you have the collection.

• Even though each magazine has the same fonts the position of everything apart from the masthead and the 2007 in the top right corner, has been moved around and placed in a different position on the front cover.