I chose to make the long shot my font covers because I have realised most music magazines headlining male artists tend to use mid shots in comparison to Female artists; showing the whole of their body. This is clearly constructed to branch out to a bigger scale of music magazine buyers and target audience a balance of males and females. When music magazines like ‘VIBE’ headlines a male artist like ‘Lil Wayne’ shown in their May 2008 addition, shows the rapper posing in a threatening way, although dressed very formally in a black suit. This still connotes the ‘Gangster Rap’ image that the magazine promotes in order to meet the interest of their buyers.
My Music magazine on the other hand headlines a long shot of the two boys, one standing up and one bending down looking away from the camera whilst one is looking to the camera. This again breaks the codes and conventions of a music magazine showing scale and composition in how the boys are posing.
Symbolic codes and conventions in media i.e. clothing and colours in most magazines I have looked at shows little clothes being worn especially when female artists are promoted. In terms of male artists, they are promoted through class and basically looking good and looking rich. For example, in Novembers 2007 addition of ‘Jay z’ on the front cover of ‘Rolling stone’ shows him in a much more ‘business’ way then usual. The photograph it self connotes wealth, and domination as target audiences’ would know he owns a number of business which enables him to have the reputation he has. In comparison to September 2007 addition of ‘Christina Aguilera’ posing in a latex sailor outfit which links to the theme of her new album ‘Candyman’. This automatically appeals to more male audiences due to it being more sexually suggestive.
On the front cover of my magazine shows a graffiti background juxtaposed with the two boys wearing shirts. I carefully thought this through and decided to dress the two boys in shirts and by choosing to the take the photographs in front of a graffiti background made the front cover of the magazine more eyes catching. The colours therefore are also very eye catching from the background showing mainly blues and greens to one of the boys wearing brown and white to another wearing a pink and black checked shirt. I personally think this works very well in reaching out to my target audience as my questionnaire results show that most fifteen to nineteen year old would describe their style as ‘urban’ or’ other’ furthermore when asked ‘what colour would appeal to you more in a music magazine?’ more then half of the students I asked said ‘Bright colours’. In this case I used the codes and conventions of a real music magazine by adapting the need for it to be eye catching, bold and vibrant.
However, when it comes to costume and jewellery as well as the background I have challenged the codes and conventions by juxtaposing two different elements of fashion (urban and smart/casual wear) together. This subsequently target audiences a younger generation.
The colour theme of my magazine (purple, red and black) are also frequently repeated in the contents page and the double spread page. This is somewhat different to most music magazine. For example ‘NME’ has a wide range of different colours they use for the contents and double spread. The magazine doesn’t use the ‘NME’ colours which are red black and white for the rest of the magazine. They tend to play around with the colours a lot more just like most music magazines. Perhaps this is done to show variation.
Different types of music interest different types of people. From Hip Hop and R&B to punk rock magazines like ‘NME’ and ‘Rolling stone’ cover a larger target audience due to the different types of music artist it promotes. For my magazine used the same examples they show by headlining different types of music. I decided to put real artists of different genres of music from American artists to British Artists. I chose to do this to show diversity as it will appeal to more people.Results from my questionnaire show most fifteen to nineteen year olds listen to R&B and Hip pop and only a small percentage listen to rock music. From the results of the questionnaire, I decided to base my double spread page of the made up group ‘Infinitive’ to promote a genre of ‘Go Go’ Music. This is a result of most ‘New Music’ being listened to by a younger generation of people. I personally think this is affective because although it’s becoming very popular it has been around for a long time as exampled in my double spread. In the write up, I gave examples of past music icons who have started out the genre. Most students who took my question also said they will be attracted to buy a music magazine because of the artists and the music it promotes. This is why I focused on showing different types of music artists on my front cover to insure that my music magazine reaches out to a wider target audience
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