1. “Notorious” music magazine evaluation.
My magazine not only keeps most forms and conventions of real media products but I also took influence from a few
different music magazines (Q, VIBE and NME). For my front cover I kept the obvious features such as a barcode,
masthead, cover lines, main image and top strip. Another aspect of actual magazines that I wanted to keep was the use
of freebies as they are a good selling technique which helps to expand a magazines demographic.
The front cover slightly imitates VIBE magazine. I have used a mid shot of my musician that I created called Tamaki
Flynn and used the cover lines as a sort of border around her. The magazine also uses the front cover to represent the
article with the main cover artist, so I made my model use quite an immature pose in order to represent the fact that
she is a young and new artist on the scene.
The contents page was supposed to reference some Q contents pages. Occasionally Q uses just the one picture and uses
the text to curve around the main image. This is how I’ve tried to make my contents page look, this is because it gives
the magazine a sophisticated and sleek look which are the features I wanted my magazine to include. Q also use a
quote from the main image next to it in order to intrigue the audience into reading the article. For the contents page I
decided not to use the cover model as I wanted to have a wide range of images in the magazine.
My double page spread has been relatively inspired by NME. I’ve used a pun as the article title to also make reference
to a rap song (‘Straight outta Compton’) which will no doubt be recognised by my magazines audience, the use of this
reference may also give the impression that this new artist is almost as good as the epic hip hop group ‘N.W.A’. I have
also used a small feature on the far right of the spread to let the readers know what a famous DJ thinks about my new
artist as it would therefore be a trustworthy review that would influence the magazines audience to listen to her.
I decided to take influence from these magazines as I think that Q and VIBE have a glossy and sophisticated theme to
them that looks attractive. And then NME as it has a playful appeal to it which humours the reader.
However, there a aspects of my magazine which may not be used in other music magazines. Such as the fact that I
didn’t include all the pages and articles featured in my magazine in the contents page, I only included the main features
and the regular slots of the magazine to keep intrigue and not make the page look too busy. I also didn’t include a
bottom strip on the front cover of the magazine as the page looked too ambushed with a top and bottom strip.
I was contemplating whether to list all the artists that would have been featured in the contents page because it is a
good feature to help the readers find the bands they are looking forward too, but it only seemed to work when in a rock
music magazine.

2. Whilst making my magazine I had continuous feedback from my friends and people of the internet (by posting different
surveys). From this I was influenced on what outfits I needed to put together for my models to wear in order to give out
a relatively realistic impression of what real hip hop stars wear as from some other pictures I found on the internet for
ideas looked too excessive. From this I too found out what kind of bands and musicians I should put on the front cover,
and more older stars from the 80s/90s seemed popular (e.g. Lauryn Hill and De La Soul) and whether having posters on
a Hip-hop magazine would work. I also had help from teachers in order to decide on the fonts as my wide selection
from fonts on the internet made it difficult to find a few that matched.
Notorious has been aimed at mainly college and university students. I decided this because they are the main audience
of the hip hop and rap genre (although the audience age does go up to around 30) and are also the age range most
likely to be interested in going to gigs and therefore will find the gig listings an important feature. Using this age range
as my target audience helped me to decide on a price (£2.50) for my magazine as it showed that I should make it
affordable for students. If I have a wide audience range it also means that I can write with a humourous tone of voice as
it means that everyone will be interested (makes it easier to understand for the younger generations reading the
magazine and gives it a nice simplicity for the older audience reading it), and not just a particular group.
This particular issue focused mainly on the strength of women, I did this because there isn’t a lot of positive female
representation in the Hip Hop genre as they are normally shown half naked standing around men and are usually
depicted as “gold diggers”. I wanted to create images and personalities of female rappers that needed to be admired
and seen as a mentor by other women trying to make it in the industry, or just admired by women overall. Hopefully it
could also give a message to men of what women should be seen as. It also means that women will appeal stronger to
the magazine which means that sales may be higher as it isn’t just aimed at men.
I also want to make sure that this magazine doesn’t focus on a particular race as most music magazines (such as NME
and Q) tend to gain a more white middle class audience, however this is said to be due to the genre of music which has
been seen to not really appeal to many other audience types. This is why I also wanted to make sure that my models
could represent a variety of ethnic groups in order to appeal to a wider audience.
I made sure the language I used in the article wouldn’t put people off by not trying to use too much (or any) slang. This
may make my audience possibly feel patronised or as if I was trying to hard to make it relate to a specific culture by
using dialect from different parts of the UK that other places might not understand.
By doing all of this I have tried to create a very mixed audience of students, women and men, and hopefully a wider
racial audience. This isn’t usually done when creating a music magazine.

3. Time Inc would be a good publisher as it publishes and distributes magazines such as VIBE, a hip hop magazine that I
took great influence from. Although it is an American company, it distributes widely in the UK. Time Inc owns the UK
magazine house IPC Media, from here they distribute magazines like NME, this shows that they are interested in music
magazines.
Another company that may distribute Notorious would be Bauer media group. They publish music magazines such as Q
and Kerrang. Although these magazines may be specifically rock magazines, a company would be interested in widening
its fan base and demographic.
Through making my magazine I have learnt how to use Photoshop and InDesign on the computer. At the beginning of
the project I had little to no experience, but since then I have learnt how to do things such as take away the background
from a picture (which I used when putting text onto my front cover and contents page). I have also learnt how to
expand a picture without distorting it which was useful when making my front cover and contents page.
I found using Photoshop to touch up the colours of my front cover picture too difficult so used a website in order to help
me change the colour and effect. I brightened the colours and put in a cross process effect as it was originally quite a
dark and dull picture. When comparing the final music magazine with my school magazine it is clear that I learnt how to
use better fonts and how to edit them.
After making my school magazine I learnt that sometimes a contents page with a single big picture will make a
magazine look a lot more glossy. I originally wanted to use a collection of pictures like I did in the school magazine but it
ended up looking quite messy and amateur.
I also learnt how important font can be in terms of giving off a specific vibe. The fonts used on the school magazine
make it look too simple and it looks too obvious that it was made by a student. This helped as when I was deciding on a
font for the front cover of Notorious the original graffiti styled font that I wanted to use made the magazine look too
homemade and immature. I then decided that a more sophisticated and retro font would give the magazine a more
stylish look. I wanted this look for Notorious as I wanted to show the more chic and glamorous side of hip hop rather
than the graffiti and drug filled culture that a lot of people probably associate it with. I stuck with the glossy font theme
for the contents page and most of the double page spread as well.