Research and case studies of real music magazines : Magazine 1 (Wordplay)

First magazine: Wordplay (Hip hop magazine - independent)

Front cover

The front cover is very minimalistic and has a white background emphasising all the other cover lines and text on the page. The masthead is across the top of the page and very bold with the skyline listing all the main features in that specific issue. The main image "joey bad-ass" takes up the majority

of the bottom two thirds and has been edited with what seems to be intricate patterns coming out of his cranium connoting his thoughts and rap lyrics to be a piece of painted art form . The shot of the artist is a medium close up shot and he appears to look directly at whoever may be reading this making it inclusive and drawing the audience in. Main cover line is on the bottom and states clearly that an exclusive interview is in the magazine with the main artists crew. He isn't from the UK and this shows how this magazine reaches out globally and isn't restricted to only the UK. The front cover has far less going on as the audience is far more familiar and more loyal to this institution.

The actual masthead "wordplay" denotes the direct link between the magazine and hip hop as mostly 

in hip hop today , lyrics are a play of words especially in the more skilled artists featured in this type of sub-cultured magazine. It has a direct link to the main image as Joey Bad-ass and crew are heavily known for their immaculate punchlines, wordplay and metaphor in their rhymes.

Contents

As this publication is quite alternative, its contents section is a editors section just bringing what's up to date with the magazine and a page with all this specific issues contributors. In the first page 

in its introduction it lists all the artists featured in this issue with no page numbering which emphasises that this magazine is thoroughly read by their audience. The house style is very simple echoed by the minimalistic tone of the front cover. but is generally very well layed out. An image of what appears to be a DJ who features in the issue takes up the top half of the page. This connotes a very brief insight into what to expect in the magazine meaning it keeps the reader from not knowing to much before they read the journalism. The actual writing is quite informal and some colloquial language is used which is attributed to this urban demography. 

Double page spread

The double page spread I have chosen to analyse features an upcoming artist "Bishop Nehru"
being interviews by one the contributors. The first page features a graffiti type portrait of the
rapper himself which is very creative and connotes his own "refreshing" approach to the industry
reflected by the journalism. This is further emphasised by the black background that spreads across the DPS and really brings out its raw energy. A caption also states who took the original image and who illustrated the actual image that appears on the magazine.  The house style again is quite minimalistic (white and green text) with one line of text in the colour pink that relays who is charge of the photography and the actual interview. In this way the editor has made it clear who the contributor is. The format of the interview itself is very straight to the point , a short introduction of the artist with columns of accompanying question and answers.

Timetoast: Production schedule

http://www.timetoast.com/timelines/928342

This is my production schedule for the foundation portfolio

Images of Mojo

These are the images of the magazine we analysed:

Contents and double page spread analysis (preparation)

Group task: analysing music magazines

Contents page analysis

There were two pages of contents, separate double page spreads however ( They weren't present on
a singular DPS). Possibly due to editing reasons or on purpose, emphasise the contents of the first page more than the second. All items were not listed and the contents were split into five sections.
Two sections on the first page and three on the second, they include in order: Features, Cover story,
regulars, "what goes on" and "the mojo filter". All sections had the contents on the right side of the page, this aids natural viewing spectrum (right to left). Accompanying images on the left. Subheadings were bold also the items were in bold font too. Specific issue contributors with small blurb mentioned at the bottom of contents page. Actual text was vertically listed.

First image , very likely to be the main feature. The image takes up the whole of the first page and seems to be in mid performance. Connotations of him almost presenting the contents that follow. Dark background emphasises the written text. Second page contains multiple images drawn our form what is listed in the remaining three sections, gives an idea of what is to follow in the magazine.  The main cover story has its own section and is directly related to the main image on the front cover , "Bob Marley". This along with the features section is on the first page of the contents signifying their importance and worth in the eyes of the reader.

Double page spread analysis.

First page is an advertisement for a live album by a band called "Primal Scream". Second page is a regular article and is from the section "What goes on" from the contents page. It appears to be an article that props up in every issue, and is an interview with three random celebrities interviewed about what "gets them going" in this case the music they love. Question format, the title is in the middle of the page. Tone is very informal , everyday conversation, makes it relatable to the audience and therefore quite inclusive. Actual layout is in columns, and there is a caption with the main image of one of the celebrities "Anthony Hopkins". Jocelyn, another interviews celebrity is almost embedded in her part of the interview/conversation and again gives of friendly/welcoming/light-hearted connotations. All the images are close ups of the celebrities with Anthony's being the largest.
Further emphasises the welcoming atmosphere as it close ups usually mean personal.

This analysis was done by Myself, Remmi, Taylor and Shamini. 
Images of the sampled magazine can be found in the next post.

Induction evaluation

Induction evaluation

Our original task was to produce a piece of journalistic writing that argued the statement of

"Is music piracy destroying the industry.". The genre i chose was independent hip-hop.

Part of our research was to hold a debate for and against in our class and we were given some time to research and come up with statistics and artist opinions. I represented the "against" side and we won the debate, our research was methodical with all our points being backed up with evidence with also some counterarguments for the obvious points that could be made to weaken our approach.

However as we all know, the debate wasn't to see who was the best but a chance for us to get down all relevant points down so in our actual written piece we can either veer towards a bias or stay objective. I stayed objective as it is easier in my opinion for the article to be more interesting and thought provoking for my audience.

Moving over to my writing skills, I think I wrote in a clear and coherent manner of standard English which is easily relatable to my target audience however I should have had more of my actual journalism than artist quotes. I balanced well the two sides to the argument and I closed the piece well. The downside is that I went well over my word limit which definitely needs to be looked at as in the future this can affect my achievement detrimentally. However as this is only induction I would expect some leeway.

The actual in-design skill I had learnt with a brief lesson by Scott proved sufficient. My finished 2 paged spread looks aesthetically easy on the eye with maybe some subtle additions of colour and theming needed to make it more professional. It was easy to grasp and I look forward to using this 

software some more and learn more techniques on it.

I got audience feedback by one student in my class, and overall she said it was good. She particularly liked my use of font and layout. One thing to improve on is on the range of image and colour which i agree upon as is one of the main things myself critiqued upon. This means I need to work on the visual and aesthetics more in the future.

From all the points made above , I set myself three targets for improvement:

A better use of colour and image in the actual spread.

Maybe a better use of background in the spread rather than just leaving it blank.

Less quotations and more actual written content.

This is my finished piece of journalistic writing under the guise of "Wordplay".