Choosing style for magazine name

Once I had my rap magazine name, I had to choose a style in which it was going to be presented. This was the colour and font.
I began choosing the font for my rap magazine title by writing the name 'Chronic' in different fonts:

I chose to have all the fonts in black as this was going to be the colour it would be. Once I had all the fonts like this I had to choose which font i wanted to use. I ended up choosing the 'Allstar4' font which I downloaded from the font website 'Dafont'.

Choosing magazine name

To choose a magazine title name, I decided to do a poll on my blog so those who visited my blog would be able to choose which name they thought was the best for a rap magazine.

After the poll closed i checked the results which is shown on the image above and the name 'Chronic' got the highest number of votes so i decided to use this as my magazine name.

Potential magazine names

 After I decided to do my music magazine on the Rap genre, I had to start deciding the names to use. Below are several names that relates to rap which could be used for my magazine.

Potential Rap magazine names:

• Flow
• Blackout
• The Beat
• Chronic
• Fuse
• Beat
• Bass

 A bit about Rap:

The genre of my music magazine is Rap, Rap is saying the lyrics in a rhythm in time to the beat. I chose rap as my genre for my music magazine because this is the genre of music that I listen to mostly. This gave me ideas on what to base my magazine on and the type of contents I could put into my magazine.
There are many famous rappers out there today such as Lil Wayne, Jay Z, Kanye West, Eminem, etc.  These people have huge fan bases and are idols to many across the world. Every rapper has a different style for rapping from one another e.g. Lil Wayne raps at a slow pace but Eminem raps at a faster pace.


Some of the artists:

Lil Wayne is a famous rapper born on the 27th September 1982 in New Orleans, Louisiana. He dropped out of school at the age of 14 to concentrate on his musical career which turned out to be a very successful career. Lil Wayne had released 9 solo studio albums and 8 collaboration albums to date, his most recent album the Carter IV was released 29th August 2011 and it was his first album since being released from prison is November 2010. Carter IV turned out to be one of his best albums to date and is Certified as 4x platinum .   Below is one of Lil Wayne's most popular song(Lollipop ft. Static) to date from his album Carter III which was released in 2008:

Eminem is a famous rapper from Warren, Michigen, U.S.A. born on 17th October 1972. He began his rapping career in 1992 and had become one of the world's best selling artist in the 21st century. He is part of a Hip-Hop duo with 'Royce da 5'9"' called "Bad Meets Evil". He has released  released 7 solo studio albums in his career and 3 collaboration albums. Below is one of Eminem's best selling songs from his album recovery:

Vibe magazine front cover analysis

Intro:

• Vibe magazine is a music and entertainment magazine founded by its producer Quincy Jones
• The magazine mainly features R&B and Hip Hop artists such as Lil Wayne, 50 cent, Eminem, T.I., Beyonce, Jennifer Lopez etc.
• The magazine is issued every quarter of the year
• The target audience for the magazine is most likely to be someone who is young and urban followers of hip hop culture. 

Front cover:

• The front cover features a picture of Hip-Hop artist Lil Wayne. In the picture Lil Wayne is shown with attitude in this picture. He is shown bare chested with a red jacket undone to show most of his upper body tattoos with a gold chain with a cross pendant and another gold chain with a stop-watch pendant.You can see most of his facial tattoos and piercings in the picture but it is hidden by the black shades that he is wearing, Lil Wayne is looking up and on the reflection of the black shades you can see a reflection of the American flag on it which shows that he looks up to his country and is proud of it. He is also wearing a black hat which contrasts with the red jacket and the white background.
• The magazine name 'Vibe'  is at the top of the magazine in a white, bold font. It is behind the picture of Lil Wayne near his head like a halo. This has always been the tradition for the Vibe magazine name as all the editions have the magazine name behind the picture of the feature artist. Below are a few examples of other Vibe magazine editions and as you can see they have the Magazine name behind the feature artist's picture.

•  Above the title there are a few artists names e.g. Meek mill, J. Cole, Keri Hilson, etc.
• The main feature story is written ;Weezy still hip-hops leading man?' this title is worded really well as this would grab the reader's attention especially the Hip-hop lovers. 'Weezy' is written in a large black font so it catches the readers eye then 'still hip-hop' is written in a much smaller and grey font almost making it not visible. Finally 'leading man' is written in the same large black font that 'Weezy' was written in. It creates a large-small-large effect and this is used for most of the remaining feature stories. They have made this the main feature story as Lil Wayne was the feature artist so doing an article on him would be appropriate.
• Other feature stories include; 'George Lucas, fly guy', 'Tupac, menace to Hollywood', 'Chris Rock "hip-hop's glory days have passed", 'Denim guide for dummies', 'La La and Tika's killer fashion adventure'. All these articles are different from each other and and would grab the readers attention due to the way that they are interestingly worded. Also in a small font at the bottom of the magazine there is a little statement saying 'The views expressed by Chris Rock, do not represent Vibe. We love waka!'  this suggests that they believe Chris Rock's statement is just an opinion.
• A USP of the magazine is the QR code scanning feature, there is a  QR code on the front cover of the magazine that can be scanned by the reader's smartphone(if they have one) using a barcode scanning application. Once you have scanned the QR code, it allows you to gain access to exclusive content. This is different as no other magazine have such feature on their magazines.

NME Magazine Analysis

General:

•  NME magazine is produced by IPC media

• The target audience for NME is retro teenagers in their early 20’s

•  The magazine costs £2.40 and the monthly revenue is £325,200

•  The magazine is published on a weekly basis 

• The magazine’s circulation is 33,875 per week, this number shows that its popular amongst its target audience

• The sort of data available on the NRS website are; weekly sales figures, circulation, etc.

The Cover:

• The magazine title is NME which stands for New Music Express. This suggests the magazine is  all about new music

•  The masterhead/title 'NME' is in a large white font, located at the top left hand corner of the magazine. The title goes over Florence's head in the picture but it almost subtle as it doesn't cover the picture much. It is aligned to the left and it has been a tradition to align the title on the left for all publications by NME.

•  The front cover consists of; The Magazine title, loads of text, the picture of the female artist Florence. The whole front cover has the same house style as in all the fonts have a similar colour and the font used is appropriate. Her name is in a large font and stands out; the font colour is red, which correlates with her hair colour, which is red.

• The image is a medium shot of Florence; she is wearing a red hat, she is wearing “Indie-styled” clothes, her hair colour is red and the clothes she is wearing is cream coloured and black. The cream coloured top matches her pale skin colour, which is pale-creamy colour.  Her facial expression is of her looking at the reader with her mouth slightly open. Her body language is very relaxed as her left shoulder is angled down which suggests she is comfortably posing and her right arm is reaching to her left arm which is facing upright showing the back of her left hand. This reaches out to the retro teenagers, as the images of her are appropriate since she is "Indie" just like most of the target audience.

• There is another image of a male smoking, with the text ‘Free Iconic Joy division posters’ alongside it. The image is in black and white format and has a white border around it. The text that goes with the picture is in a white colour, which correlates with the Magazine house style. The text is large enough to stand out without disturbing the rest of the texts in the front cover.

• The content that is promoted in the front cover is; the death of Steve jobs, The greatest track of the last 15 years, Noel Gallagher album verdict,  andWu lyf vs. arcade fire/artic monkeys/rolling stones,

• the main content promoted is an interview with Florence on ghosts, Amy Winehouse, and her fear of messing up.

•  The magazine talks to the reader formally but says everything in brief but it catches the reader’s attention.
• The magazine’s USP is that doesn’t look like other magazine.

Inside:

•  There are 66 pages inside the magazine

•  There are 20 pages of adverts in the magazine

• There are 3 main categories of advertisements in the Entertainment, clothing, and Technology. All the entertainment adverts are such like album releases, music tours etc. The clothing adverts are from JD sports showing new 'The Duffer of St.George' clothes and 'Puma' swede shoes. The Technology adverts are all phone adverts such as Iphone 3gs and Sony Ericsson Experia play. There is a 'Jack Daniels' whiskey advert in  the magazine which gives us a hint about the target audience, it suggests that they are old enough to drink and have the money to potentially buy the whiskey.

Here are some examples of the adverts in the magazine;

This is a 'Jack Daniels' advert in the magazine. 

JD advert in the magazine, there are two JD adverts in this edition

•  There are 39 articles in total and they are mostly interview with artists, new music album reviews and phone reviews.

 This article is about a new artist 'Radar' and how he got into music and a bit about his life. Writing an article about new artists correlates with the magazine name of 'New Music Express' which shows that the magazine is about new music so they write about new music.

• The main categories of articles were music, this is expected as this is a music magazine

• There were a few feature articles such; article on late Steve jobs, greatest tracks of the last 15 years, Noel Gallagher album verdict, and the main feature article was an interview with artist Florence

•  There are 7 double page spreads and 6 of them are interviews with artists and 1 is about a music festival

This is an example of the double page spreads in the magazine

 

•  The magazine has a unified house style, you can tell this by the use of colour, language and font throughout the whole magazine. Throughout the magazine the same range of colour and font is used which makes the magazine look alike through the whole magazine also the language is the same throughout which makes it sound the same throughout the whole magazine.

•  The house style is appropriate to the target audience since they use retro colours and language that can be understood by the TA which is young retro teenagers in their 20’s