AS Level Media: Magazines: January 2011

My magazine I got inspired by was the Vibe, (Quincy Jones) launched Vibe in 1993, in partnership with Time Inc.

I chose that magazine because I like this particular genre of music that was in the magazine. The vibe magazine is a hip hop and R&B magazine which is sold only in America. I looked at this magazine because I like the way the layout was set for each issue. They have sold they had lots of particular issues where it’s depending on the picture where the texts goes. Also I wanted it to be different to the other people in the class most people were doing indie rock and rock music, So I chose to do hip hop and R&B. There are not many hip hop magazines out there on the market today in the UK, so I thought picking hip hop as a genre would look good. I was influenced by the vibe magazine mainly because I liked the way it was laid out and the way the photograph is used it has a big picture of main people in the magazine music artists on the front it always draws you to it and its effective to the read you know what the magazine is mainly about. Also I liked the way the text was laid out the text is wrapped around the people. I think my magazine follows the conventions of all the other magazines. The picture shows that it is from the Hip-Hop type genre. I think it suits it because the title and the names of the artists are similar colours blue and black. The black on the front cover representing the culture grounds or the areas these genre people are from the upper class people or theirs upper class people in this magazine celebrities and other top artists. Each names are different colours of the names of artists are different because more artists are more important than each other have more meanings than each one. Comparing my magazine to vibe magazine I think my magazine has similarities staring with the way the image is laid out on the page the text is displayed down each side of the magazine left and right and also with the title it is shown on the top and centred in the middle. Mostly on the Vibe magazine there is an image which is covering partly the title. That image is mostly the artist on the front of the magazine which is mostly what the magazine (the main headline). The reason for this is that the people already know about this magazine and the audience recognize what magazine it is, so the artist shown on the front cover catches your eye more

I think it fits into the market because it looks like a magazine, the reason it looks like a magazine because the image looks professional like the vibe magazines that have been produced they all have photo shoots on the front, with the text around the image I carefully thought about where to put the text with most magazines there is cover lines on the right side, so it didn’t cover the image the only part of the magazine that the cover lines would not work is the face. The cover lines don’t cover the face because you would want to see what the headline is all about.

The people represented in my magazine are a boy (Stuart Rush). He is on the front cover of my magazine to show hip-hop is alive and got more for you with a new single. The boy on the front cover because to show he is new and he’s ready to bring out his single There both wearing black clothes on a white back ground the black connotations of darkness, bad and evil. The black clothes e.g. the black jumper stands out on the magazine. On the white background they stand out more as if it was a black background it wouldn’t attract many audiences because it doesn’t catch your eye. The boy is represented as he is here bring hip hop back. He’s looking back like he’s ready to perform on stage on concert, just appearing from likes he’s the new person on the block. The clothes he is wearing on the front of the magazine is a navy hoody and a scarf this style of clothing would be stereotypically been worn by a ‘chav’ showing they have the money they are the new people on the block. The representation on the type of genre of my magazine could be representing the black culture, black street culture. They get out there they break the rules. We see hip hop as a audience as a black culture because most rappers and hip hop artists are black and we see them as people that hang around in groups socialised things together. (Stereotypically). Hip Hop is also the upper class of black culture most rappers and hip hop artists are black in the media of music at the moment in America and UK e.g. Dizzie Rascal Snoop Dogg, Jay Z

My magazine would be suitable for the inter media partners company. They would publish my magazine because they are a well know magazine sellers on the market. They privately bought out vibe magazine after shutting down, I think they should see my magazine to make my magazine to get it well know like NME, Kerrang music and get more people interested in the media into this type of music they are a well know company of producing magazines and selling other media products to the audience. My magazine fits into the inter media because they sell hip hop genre magazines in the market today. How intermedia would advertise they would advertise it in high class magazine shops not like supermarkets or postoffices because it would make the magazine look

The purpose of my magazine is to entertain 18 - 24 years old boys with the latest music readers and also new people with singles albums to do with hip hop genre. The magazine is to inform the reader with the interviews in the magazine to tell the readers what hip hop is really like in the world today. Most magazines today are really independent reading just read when your bored or want to find out stuff you don’t really look at a magazine with a group of friends its for gossip and interests. It think the audiences might have interests in like football and basketball mainly because that in the connotations or stereotypical of young black groups.

Attracting the audience is the main part of the magazine, the way words are laid out the way words are used in the magazine. My words on the front of the are things you would see on the front of a usual music magazines basic layout title at the top or top left hand corner a mast head and pull quotes.

I have learnt a lot of things doing my project how to use Photoshop more effectively in media and make the pictures look better than they were original like the pictures were dull using the tools brightness’s and contrasts you can make the picture look more professional . I also learnt some other new techniques in Photoshop. I learned how to do glows (around objects to make them stand out) around the text using effects and the filters became great help to make my magazine look good and making things dark from other projects I used it in my work for my magazine.

In my magazine I have mainly learnt using a programme called photo shop, I thought this programme was the most useful to me because it is more advanced software to make images look more professional such as the images on my magazine front cover.

With the image on the front cover this is how I created the image:

Each of these photos i have used in my magazine is edited on Photoshop, with these photos I took with a Nikon D3000. With this camera it made it a lot easier to do close ups and high contrast images.

The photos I have edited are all edited in the same way.

-First you get the image and paste it into Photoshop

-Then create a new layer and name in background

With that layer use the fill tool and fill it white (ffffff)

It depends what you can do, you can do many ways to edit the background, you can use the lasso tool and the polygonal lasso tool, or you can use the eraser tool and rub out all of the background of the picture.

The last thing to do when you have no background is turn the image black and white, image, adjustments then you can adjust the colours on the image by changing a particular colour on the image.
Finally rick click on the layer (any layer) and flatten the image

The other parts of the magazine such as a the title and cover lines were created with the text tool on Photoshop, but I did look on dafont.com for ideas of what my title could look at but I didn’t go for a fancy font because I thought that the simple fonts were more effective.

Looking back at my preliminary task at the beginning of the year I think I made the right choice on making a magazine than a film because the magazine I knew I had more strength sides of doing the magazine. I didn’t know much about what to do with film I was going to do film with a partner then I thought magazine would be more suitable for me. I have made progress on how to make a magazine with my first task I did, it ended up looking more like a poster than a cover from than and school magazine. It looked more like a poster because it had bold letters and big writing and not a lot of it on the actual magazine the colours on the front were bold and simple looked cartoony didn’t look suitable for a school magazine. With my primary task I think I have made a lot of progress with making a music making because the magazine I created for this final task looks like a music magazine.