Final Product

Final double page spread

The structure of this page is very clear as the main body is fit onto one rectangle and in three clearly seperate columns. This allows my page to look more professional and organised.

 The colours on the page are conventional of hip hop magazines (I saw this in my genre research). The colour red is suitable for my product as it has connotations of urgency, passion and danger. Gold is symbolic of wealth and power - this is what many popular/mainstream rappers aspire to achieve and also say that they have in their songs (e.g. ASAP Rocky M$ or Kanye West- Stronger). The combination of black and white is timeless and the strong contrast between the two colours reflects the harsh reality and honesty of the artist on the double page spread's lyrics (the outspoken lyrics are commented on in the final paragraph of the article so a link can be made directly).

The article is written in a sit down interview format. Instead of writing the questions and then their answers; I decided to write an article with embedded quotes as in my primary research I saw that hip hop magazines such as XXL do this quite often. In the article I discussed the rappers childhood, future ambitions, album progress, journey so far and other topics as such.

My photo challenges stereotypes of young black men within society as they are stereo-typically racially profiled as gang members and associated with violence and other criminal activities. As violence and weaponry are used a lot in hip hop it would have been easy for me to slip into this convention and promoted these things also. However, I refrained from using the typical hip hop look but still created an urban costume by using bold colours and shapes. I did not use any guns, money, imitated drugs or violent imagery in my media product as my magazine is aimed at 16 - 19 year olds and I do not want my magazine to encourage such behaviour.  Furthermore, this photo sticks to genre conventions as my research helped me conclude that many hip hop magazines use direct mode of address to communicate with the readers. I believe this eye contact is good in my case as hip hop is supposed to be very direct and confrontational.

I would rather my magazine encourage a fresh face for hip hop and one that completely disproves stereotypes surrounding the genre of music and also different social groups across society. To enhance this photo of Peter and to make him look more like a rapper, I edited his hair to make it a more trendy image by giving him a blonde - high top this hair style is very popular among young people at the moment and so makes my model look relevant to the here and now. I believe this page will appeal to my target audience as it has a clear colour scheme and lay out. Furthermore, I think the graffiti/quirky background.

As many other professional publications do, I made sure to place my logo on the page also.

Final contents page 1

This is my final contents page.  To create the background: I made two layers of plain white fill and added textures and filters to them to create a new theme that would suit my magazines style and look unique. I left the bottom layer white and used many filters and gradients over the one on top (darker purple, has blue blotches) and then cut a triangle out of the darker layer by using the magnetic lasso tool on Photoshop to reveal the white surface below. This process was completely experimental, as I was just trying to make my page different.  The colours on the page go together well as I only incorporated colours that could be taken from the photos on the page by using the eye dropper tool. 

I used Beattrip's tag line on the top of the page as it looked empty and I felt like repeating the tag line would add some consistence to the magazine. I chose to have the name of the magazine and contents down the left side as that's how it was on the cover page. I edited all the pictures before adding them to the page on Photoshop, just to either make the colours brighter and bolder or seem darker. For example, the main image is of Peter, I chose to have it bolder as he is wearing red and this contrasts with his blakc and white background.  

Chloe's picture on the top right of the page is slightly darker, as when looked at properly, this suits the mood of her photo more. I believe all the colours on the page work well together but are also not traditionally used together. For example, violet, purple, red, blue and white are not colours that are typically coordinated together - but I believe they do work well on this page. Again, just as on my cover page, I put a purple-to-white gradient layer over the final piece, this was to keep the matte look consistent to ensure that the pages would work well together. I reduced the opacity of this additional layer to 35% so that the page could still be seen, but I moved the images and title above this layer so that they would remain bold. 

To create the image of Diana on Photoshop, I used the magnetic lasso tool to crop her out of the original photo and then duplicated her layer onto an image of Peter as I wanted to have a graffiti background instead of the original plain white background. I then zoomed in and used the quick selection brush tool to delete excess pixels that made it obvious Diana was not really infront of the graphic wall. Following this step I then used the blur tool to blend the outline of Diana's layer with the background. I also altered the colours of the background using the hue and saturation adjusters and resized the background to make it look more realistic. 

The different sizes of text was influenced from my contents page research as I believe it is a simple way to reflect importance within the titles, I made the celebrity names bigger in size to connote their importance on the page (to appeal to my young, aspirer type audience). Page numbers are coloured red throughout my magazine, including my double page spread. 

I believe this page will appeal to my audience for a series of reasons. Firstly, my models are from both genders this makes it easier for me to show that my magazine is for both males and females, secondly they are all young which reflects that my product is aimed at young people. Furthermore, the use of trendy and branded clothes within their costumes will appeal to my aspirer and mainstream type target audience.

Although I made other pages, I believe this was my strongest as it has a good lay out and interesting themes (such as the big triangle - a shape heavily associated with hip hop thanks to many popular artists such as Jay Z wearing clothes and jewellery with the shape on it). In addition, the remaining area on the page has a cheetah print-like design on it thanks to the seperate layers of filter on it. 

Cover, Final and update.

These are the three main stages of my cover, in which I was making crucial decision about the house style of my page. I did use the Directors criticisms as some constructive feedback and changed the size of the model to decrease the amount of white space on the page. To further reduce this I added my tagline and date: "JANUARY 16: A JOURNEY INTO SOUND" this tagline will change every month, e.g. "FEBRUARY 16: A JOURNEY INTO SOUND".  In addition to this, combining the tagline and date allowed me to remove the date line next to the bar code (AUGUST 2015) which improved the overall look of my page as it now appears less clustered. 

This is my final cover:
I created my final cover by mainly relying on the grid view so that I could place everything in it's proper position on the page to avoid disrupting the harmony of the composition of graphics. 
I believe the gradient layer with altered opacity levels was a significant factor in improving the aesthetic of my cover as it made it appear more professional. This links back to my Target Audience research, in which one of the students I interviewed commented that the colours were too bright. I tackled this issue with the use of the additional layer as it matified the colours and reduced the brightness, causing my magazine to look less "cheap" and tacky. 
Furthermore, I did reduce the specs around the anchoring text which also made the writing more legible. I also followed the feedback of another student I interviewed and reduced the size of the sell lines to create more space around my model's head, this makes her the focal point of the page and strengthens her importance on it. This factor, combined with the direct mode of address and shot angle/zoom creates what I believe is a powerful image, with a look that is almost careless yet also very mindful.
I believe the colours on the page all work together very well. 

Close-up of tag line on page. 

I believe the half/half filtered image links to the anchoring text as it shows the transition of a person,  implying her metamorphosis was overwhelming as it was portrayed visually on a cover. The effect also links to the belief around hip hop, the ideas surrounding people's alter egos in the industry: having to act hard or as someone you are not. This is presented in the use of two contrasting colour schemes on one model, showing a clash of two natures in one person.

I continued the half/half idea into the anchoring text also to suit the house style.

New bar-code, less clustered, looks more professional.