EVALUATION OF FINAL PRODUCT

-In what way does your magazine use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of existing music magazines?
From my research of other hip hop music magazines such as XXL, they all seem to approach the reader in the same way, in your face and sometimes hostile, with dark, sinister colour schemes and dominant, menacing images that visually threaten the reader to a degree, and aggressive feature titles on the front page that use minor curse words and slanted text. They also seem to share the same values: success, money, power, as their front covers are more often than not centered around a stern looking, dominant male figure covered in expensive clothing and gold jeweler and accessories, or “bling”. These returning features of hip hop music publications cement the already dominant negative stereotype of hip hop listeners and artists, when in fact most people interested in and who follow hip hop are nothing like the cultural preconception of ‘hip hoppers’, and in fact the opposite can be said about a lot of the people I will be trying to reach with Sample. So In this way, I think my magazine will destroy the common negative stereotype of people who listen to hip hop.
I also think that the fact that my magazine focuses on the UK hip hop scene as a whole, I separates itself from most, if not all other music magazines, as it is the only publication I know to look at and include articles about aspects of the scene in which the genre is based apart from the just the music.

-How does your music magazine represent your chosen target audience?
My magazine represents the UK hip-hop social group as it adopts a mature approach, which a lot of my target audience can relate to, however, my readers also like to relax as I have learnt from studying them first hand, so I have tried to give off a relaxed vibe with my magazine.
From my questionnaire, I learnt that a majority of my target audience enjoy and are interested in other aspects of the UK hip hop scene, therefore I made sure my magazine also looked at different aspects of UK hip hop, thereby satisfying all my readers needs in a magazine.


-What kind of institution might distribute you magazine?
I think my magazine could possibly be sold at newsagents and other publication distributers, as my target audience regularly visit off licenses and newsagents in their daily lives. I think it would compete well against other magazines in shops as I designed it to stand out with the bold lettering and “warning” colours(black and yellow).
However I think my product would sell best in hip hop gigs and open-mic nights across the UK, as the people who would buy tickets to and attend these sorts of events are exactly the same people who I would expect to buy my magazine. In the same thought process, I think my magazine would sell well at shops like charhart, Fenchurch and hip hop record stores as the customers they get are the same customers I expect to purchase my product.

-Who do you think your audience would be for your music magazine?
I think that my magazine would be aimed at 16-23 year olds as it is relaxed but it still takes itself seriously, and that is the general age of the people I have met who are into this type of music. My audience will be mainly male as the UK hip hop scene is a very masculine one possibly due to the lack of women mc’s and graffers. My audience will mainly live in culturally rich cities as it is a community based genre, centered around hip hop nights and graffiti jams etc. however for those that live in more “out of the way” cities, I believe that my magazine could bring the culture to them.

-How did you attract/address the audience for your music magazine?
I would attract my potential readers to buy my magazine by advertising in a variety of ways. One way would be to link up with gig promoters and event organizers and get my logo on flyers and advertise the availability of purchase at these events on the flyers. I could also organize my own nights, and name them after the magazine and again, have my magazine on sale at these events. Another way of promoting my publication is to create a graffiti team who could paint various murals based around my masthead in different legal spots around the UK. All of these ideas would be perfect ways of promoting my magazine as they specifically target my audience.
-What did you learn about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
As I have completed a GCSE in Media and infrequently use photoshop for various homeworks and projects, so I was already fairly confident with the software when it came to creating my product. Before starting the front cover, contents page and feature, I already had a grasp on the tools that were necessary for different tasks and I knew how to confidently use them to my advantage, however I had not used the program for an inordinate amount of time so my photoshop skills were rusty to say the least. While creating my product, I got a firm grasp of the various shortcuts that the program has to offer which greatly speeded up the process of design, I also gained confidence in using layer styles to add shadow, glows and highlights to a layer, the magic wand and lassos to cut and crop certain sections of an image out whilst leaving other sections in, and many other useful tools and techniques that helped me confidently create a well-designed, high quality magazine.
-Looking back on the preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progession ion the progression from it to the final product?
I learnt from my preliminarily that composing a magazine page takes time and requires alot of patients. I also become more confiedent with the program photoshop than before, and felt confident when approaching that final task that I could produce a quality magazine with the program as I was more knowledgeable about the tools and techniques nescessary for composing a good front page, contents page and two page feature. I also employed alot of the features that I used in my preliminary task and incorperate them into my music magazine, for example, the paint splashes were a good way to add substance and flavour to an otherwise lifeless and lacking front page, and I used them to good effect in my music magazine.