Magazine EvaluationBy Jack Colegrove

Activity 1 : In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Magazine Title The name Hustle links in with the magazine genre I

chose as it is very closely linked with the Rap genre. It is used commonly in rap songs, another link to the rap magazine genre, is that rap magazines tend to have 1 big, bold word as the font, for example Vibe Magazine, and XXL Magazine. Once I decided I wanted a small title to match the other rap magazines I came up with a list of possible names. I then Narrowed the list down using the opinion of other people, and found the name that suited the most was "Hustla" C.R.E.A.M

HypeBeatzWordHustlerChronicPhreshHustla

Here is the original list of names :

Page Layouts Once again, for my page layout I sought

influence from various Hip/Hop magazines such as, VIBE, XXL and the Source. Many issues from these publishers have the same sort of layout, with a big picture of the artist on the front, and a big masthead. Another convention they have used is to have little information on the cover

My Magazine places the barcode in the bottom right hand corner, which is a commonly used convention among many magazines.

On my draft I followed the same sort of conventions, in using a big picture of the artist, I decided to carry this convention through to my final design

On my contents page, I set the title to be displayed vertically down the left hand side of the page, I then put a picture of the artist alongside the “contents” and the information on the right, I haven’t seen this done in a magazine before but it appears to have worked, as the readers eye draws firstly to the “contents” then to the picture and finally onto the information, which Is usually what the contents page intends to do.

My DPS was set out with a large picture taking up approximately half the page, and the quote filling the “white space” on the page, my text was then placed on the other page. This is used by a few hip hop magazines, such as the source, and XXL. The big picture of the artist makes the article look attractive to the reader. I did the same with my draft DPS.

Costumes, props, iconography used to reflect genre

For inspiration I looked at various rap magazines, specifically I looked at what the artist on the cover was wearing. I also looked at music videos from the rap genre and took into account the iconography and props that I could use.

In the end I decided to use the baseball jacket, baseball jackets relate to the rap genre as a lot of Hip/Hop artists have been pictured wearing them- along with the Baseball jacket, I decided to use a fitted hat, this also ties in with the rap genre as it is the kind of hat that most rap artists would wear(see next slide for pictures)

For the pose I came up with a variety of different ideas from looking at magazine covers such as vibe, xxl. I then had a list of the poses I wanted, took the pictures and which one was the best. The pose had to link to the Rap genre so the expression couldn’t necessarily be a smile

Costume Ideas

Camerawork and framing of images

The image of the artist is taken head on- with the waist and up shown on the picture. The reasoning for this was so you could see the jacket and the hat, as these items closely relate to the Rap genre, and so the image fits.

The lighting had to be sufficient enough to be able to see the artists face, even though the hat shaded it, I feel the lighting I used was good enough as you can clearly make out all the features of the artist

Title, article, header etc. font and style

For my font, i knew that I needed to make it big and bold, which suited the masculinity that I needed for the Rap Genre, other magazines such as Vibe also have a big font.

I chose Black as the font cover as it contrasts really well with the white background and so it is clearly readable, the size I used was 35, which makes it easily visible by the reader.

For the other text on the page I used a mixture of Black and Red fonts, this was to distinguish between what was big news and what was general information, the font in red is the font that the user is most interested in, and the red fonthelps it to catch the readers eye

The specific font I used for the smaller text on the title page was Calibri, which was plain enough to appeal to the reader, and not be over the top. The font size was 19, so the reader can still read it easily without having to look closely.

For the contents page I chose a medium font, slightly smaller than the title and slightly bigger than the information font. Again, I used the same fonts as on the title page to ensure consistency within the pages, again I used the same convention as the front page by differentiating between font colours to correspond with their relevance .

I aligned the font in a vertical manner so it is easily viewed

By the reader, and it also stands out, the “Features” part of the

Contents page is the same font as the “Hustla” title, it is also

the same colour

For my Double page spread, I used a much smaller font, to ensure that all of the text would fit on the page with ease, to help distinguish between the artist and the interviewer, I looked in some magazines and saw the most popular convention used was the put the Questions and Answers in separate paragraphs, and to colour them differently, for my magazine, once again I chose the red and black, which is consistent with my other pages. The font was aligned to try and make the text on the lines finish at the same point, this was too make the DPS look professional.

I added a Quote from the article in, next to the artist, in the same way as I did on the front cover, the font used for the quote is slightly bigger, as it intends to catch the readers eye before they start reading the article, thus giving them an impression of the article by reading the quote.

How your artist(s) are representedMy artist is represented as a stereotypical rapper would be, the “hard-man” image is used a lot in Hip Hop Magazines (see next page for pictures) and I decided to follow this convention also.

The artist is also showing a “gang sign” which is used in magazines such as “XXL”, this is too relate to the Rap Genre, as, typically- rappers are pictured “Throwing up a Gang Sign” they also do this is music videos as well as magazines to appeal to the audience.

As well as using the gang sign convention on the Front cover, I used it again on the DPS and the contents this makes my magazine look consistent, and gives the impression that the artist is doing what they usually do

Colour scheme

I decided to use the convention of contrasting colours on my front cover, by using the 4 colours of Red, Black, white and grey. the Black and Grey are dull colours, so the brightness of the white and the red contrast it well, the use of the colour red stands out in particular as it is so different from the background. Because it stands out- it draws the readers eye, this is why I put all the important information in red.

For the contents page, I changed the background to the a grey colour, because the picture I used has a white background.

On the DPS, I changed the background back to white, and used the same colours as the front cover. The grey, white, red and black are used for the same things as I used them for on the cover, such as using the red and black to distuinguish between different text.