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How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Each magazine any institution produces it always represents the social group of that music in one way or another;  a good example is if we look at my previous posts regarding VIBE & NME magazines. Vibe often has quite a Hip artists on the front with cool looking fonts, which is what their target audience often aspire to be, then if we look at NME you will often see crazy fonts, with outrageously unique dressed artists on the front, which their readers also aspire to be.

– From my magazine cover we can see that I have the male dominant fonts, red & black, with what appears to also be a male dominant font, big, bold & curvy. Remembering that the social group which represent Grime consists predominantly of males aged between 16-28, they are often smartly dressed and rarely have a wealthy background you can see this is represented in a subliminally way from my cover.

My feature artists has been given a grey colour over him, showing that their is not much colour about his life, yet he has the transition of coming out of the plain white – showing he has achieved something. The social groups that would follow this magazine would also be looking to do the same thing.

Social groups in grime are 100% committed to following it, in songs they often describe how they are constantly ‘writing bars’ (lyrics) – with this I have appealed to my social group by offering a free grime 2010 calendar, the social group often surrounds themselves with such media, a calendar with famous artists in their room would be something desirable as it’s visible to give them constant aspiration.

Finally you can see the image in the bottom left hand corner – if you asked anybody of that age which social group do you think he comes from, people would instantly either say a more rap/hip-hop/grime based social group than a rock/punk – these are ways that I have managed to appeal & represent the magazines social group.

What kind of Media Institution might distribute your media product and why?

A media institution is an established, often profit-based organization, that deals in the creation and distribution of advertising. Currently there are many different types of media institutions in the industry; some of the ones you may recognize most would be.

• Disney
• Sony
• Time Warner
• Lionsgate

As you can see from my explanation of a media institution you will instantly know what each institution represents, for exampple Disney & Time Warner are often used for Cartoons or a younger target audience, whereas Lionsgate are often found producing films such as The Grudge & films such as Saw, aiming at a maturer audience specifically in the horror genre.

So with my institution I would be looking to aim it at a company which produces between the ages 16 – 28, are relevant to music but most importantly it is vital that they are either specific to a genre such as Rap, Hip-Hop or Drum & Bass. The reason for this is that even though one institution may target the same age range as me, they might often promote magazines which are aimed at a female target audience, or not even about music.

Therefore in my case I will be looking for a media institution which promotes in my age range at a predominantly male based audience who either listen to Rap, Hip-Hop or Drum & Base; as we already know my magazine is more a niche type of product, and with this I will need more a niche type of media institution rather than a popular commercial one – even though they might be a better institution, they may not necessarily know how and who to promote my magazine to, which means I would be making a bad choice, even if it seemed obviously the good one.

Analysis of Q Article

Analysis of Q Magazine

I feel that an analysis of an existing magazine will prove useful as it allows me to breakdown exactly what the forms & conventions are of the double page article. In this particular double page article we can see that they have a relevant image of the interview and they have inserted large clear sub-headings. To demonstrate how clear Q magazine are making their article they have took a quote said by a certain band member, and have inserted it beneath an image of them which then gives you a clear picture as to what the person is saying – these quotes are inserted to draw the reader in. We know this from the use of bold fonts. Finally Q have also successfully managed to keep their article formal and neat through the use of columns and paragraphs.

Researching Existing Articles;

Forms & Conventions:

• Image (of artists or images relating to the article)
• Subheadings in bold.
• Interview
• Quotes

• Drop-cap this is to signify the beginning of article.
• Introductory text.
• Column
• Paragraphs

Researching Feature Articles;

What do feature articles have?

Biographic

• Story about an artist/band
• Based on research & expressed opinion
• Will contain details regarding an experience etc etc.

Interview

• Talks to an Artists/Band often will be a one to one.
• Can be conducted in a question & answers format – including quotes from the band/artists
• Also can be done in descriptive writing, informing the reader of the scenery and other details.

Each of these forms have the ability to do the following;

• Quotes/Speech/Statements
• Tone- friendly/welcoming (Depending on the audience)
• Tone is set by a narrator (writer)
• Images
• Paragraphing/Columns/Subheadings
• Relevant to audience
• Inform and entertain

Title Of Article

“The Beat Goes On”

Magazine

NME

Audience

People interested in Indie music or readers of NME.

Purpose

To inform and entertain readers about “The Drums” musical career.

• ” The drums have had a busy month…”
• Talks about shows in England
• Their songs.
• opinions of the band. “Madonna is c***”

How does the writer manage to ‘hook’ you?

• Writer introduces the article like a story. ” It began…”
• Friendly but informative tone.
• Knows a lot about the Band.
• Uses various Quotes from the band.
• Images with captions.

How does the author bring the article to the end?

By talking about what the band’s future holds and referring to quotes of one of their songs.

Articles

Introduction;

Before I produce my article I need to make sure I have done the necessary research on them to ensure that I am able to produce and effective article that has a format it can follow, so the aim is to understand what is needed to create an effective double page article for my coursework.

• A feature article is a creative article that deals with real events issues and trends.
• Places an emphasis on the people rather than facts like in news articles.
• Seven types with common elements.

Human Interest Feature

• most common type of feature article.
• reports on someone’s success in spite of great odds.
• Tragic predicament.

Personality Feature

• Famous or not so famous
• how someone has gained recognition
• similar to a character sketch.

Informational Feature

• insightful coverage of the topic
• detailed information focused on one aspect of a given topic.
• writer makes a personal connection to the subject and includes their voice.

Others

• The ‘Best’ Articles. (telling the reader the best out there.)
• The News Feature (human interest to breaking news.)
• The How to Feature (how to do something but not instructions.)
• The Past Events Features. (Focusing on historical events.)

Coursework Cover – Final

In what ways does your magazine use, develop and challenge forms and conventions of existing magazines?

I feel that with my magazine cover I have successfully been able to use, develop and challenge forms & conventions of existing magazines. With my magazine being targeted towards a Grime target audience, it really allows me to emphasis on challenging forms and conventions of other magazines purely because Grime is such a niche market with a low fan base compared to other commercial musics such as pop.

However there are forms & conventions I have followed, and the reason for this is that I feel they have to be, as if not, your magazine could fail because of it. These two forms & conventions are organization/tidiness and a house style choice of colours. This means I have conformed my magazine like others to make sure all the text is very clear and big for the reader to see from the shelf, similar to other magazines such as NME who have a very predominant title, but if we also look at other magazines from my research such as ‘GQ’ or even ‘Q’ they may use different colours for different editions, however the magazines always have a limited amount of variations in colour perhaps 3 or 4, generally 5 at the max. The reason I have used this for my magazine is that it gives off a tidy and formal aura from the shelf. Evidently my reason to include organisation as one of the forms that I have followed is so that my audience are able to clearly read from the front what the magazine contains but at the same time withholding the most important information which acts as an incentive for the customer to purchase the magazine.

I also feel that I have managed to develop conventions through the creation of my magazine cover at the same time, one of these is the recognizable side banner and logo following my masthead, if we look at other magazines which are extremely popular i.e ‘Q’, ‘GQ’, ‘NME’ & VIBE – they do have clear mastheads, big & bold titles, however they do not have a convention or form which I feel I have managed to develop, which is the introduction of my banner and logo. Down the left hand side you can see my black and red banner, one of the advantages from the way I have developed this is that if I change my form of ‘house colours’ in a different edition, I am able to implement these colours in both my banner and logo which then allows me to conform.

Finally I have challenged forms & conventions in my magazine by taking other forms & conventions which have been used by the major magazines and implemented it into my front cover but with my own style, take for example my large image – most magazines which have a feature article on an artist will have a large image of them on the front cover, and from my magazine you can see this, however what I have also done is cover my layer white, and then erased the white to give the grey background a loose appearance like a shadow. The idea is to show that the artist has come from the light with the white surrounds but also has  a grey effective shadow showing that he still has his ‘Grimey’ personality about him.

Conclusion – Forms & Conventions

After reviewing three popular magazines and their contents cover it now allows me to choose which forms & conventions I will be using for my contents page. Like Kerrang, my genre of music is niche, so I will perhaps go for a niche approach to my contents page – however I know already that one of the conventions is that it has to be organised, so if I find that a niche approach to my contents page proves difficult for me to also make it organised, I will then design my magazine contents page to be more conventional.

Forms & Conventions;

• Images / Photos – Articles – Logo
• Clear Headings – Captions – Quotes – Page Numbers
• Editors Letter
• Perhaps breaking into Columns – Continuous Colours (House Style) – Consistant Use of Font.

My images will be relatively small and there wont be many – I might put page numbers next to the image with either a caption or small article depending on the type of story. The editors letter will come next to my Logo / Title which will be on the top section of the contents page. The heading will have similar use of font and colours about them to give my contents page a House Style. More information will be held on the main story and the relevant page, however the story will still not be completely given away to keep it more exclusive, building up the suspense towards it.

To be certain whether to insert the use of columns or ‘sectioning it off’ I will draw several sketches in different manners to see what I feel is more appropiate to the genre and reader.

An example of how I will present articles can be demonstrated through the main story based on the covering artist ‘Leon Surrain.’ I will take the caption on the front cover ‘The Step Into Fame’ and use that as an article heading on the contents page – following this I will write in a bit more detail what the interview was about, a quote of what he said and the page the interview is on – this allows me to build up the suspense with the reader who can then skip to the exclusive story if they want to.