To begin with, we looked at various genres of magazines: Indie,Rock, RnB, Hip Hop.We looked at these magazines to get a brief idea of the key elements and codes and conventions we would need to include in our magazines e.g Masthead, Headline, Color Scheme, Strap lines, whether to include the use of colloquial language depending on what our target audience is. We will use the media MIGRAIN MODEL to analyse the magazines.

Here are some examples of some different genes we looked at:

Hip Hop magazine:
The name of the magazine (Vibe) reflects the genre of Hip Hop.

Vibe was lunched in 1993 and is funded by Time Inc. The magazine is issued monthly. Vibe magazine focuses on RnB and Hip Hop artists, actors and entertainers, as this is all a part of the theme of the magazine.

The main colours they have used is red, green and white. They have used these colours so they stand out of the dark background. The writing is positioned down the side of the magazine so that you can still see the image of Chris Brown as he is the main focus. The writing at the top of the page is on a slant, this makes the magazine less formal as it is aimed at a younger target audience and to portray a Hip Hop style.They have put the artist-Chris Brown- on the cover mainly because he is a Hip Hop artist, also to show that he is the main focus of the magazine. His clothing and accessories are all part of his costume to show the theme of Hip Hop. His stance, his facial expressions and the way they have positioned him in the frame is to show the image he is trying to portray as an hip hop artist.

Vibes target audience is predominantly young, urban followers of hip-hop culture. The magazine is issued monthly- One of the reasons may be that because this magazine is aimed at the younger population they many not have enough money to be nuying the magazines weekly. They have priced the magazine at £3.75 as it is comparable to other monthly music magazines such as Hip Hop Magazine which is currently priced at £4.50 the reasons for doing so is they need to take into account manufacturing and production costs and also advertising.

The ideologies of the magazine is the Hip Hop culture. Aimed at people who have an intrest in the Hip Hop lifestyle.


Rock Magazine:
Classic Rock is a magazine dedicated the radio format of classic rock, published by Future Publishing which also run more than 100 magzine and attract a big audience of 11 million to its website:future.plc. It mainly focuses on bands from the 1960s to the 1990s such as Pink Floyd. It also includes articles and reviews from contemporary and upsoming artists.It recently published its 100th issue and now has a higher circulation than NME. Classic rock magazine was first ever issued in 1998 showing that it hasn't been around for very long but has still mabnaged to be more succeful than other music magazines in the genre.Classic Rock became a regular fixture in newsagents the UK, Ireland and Europe, and now publishes 13 issues a year.

Classic rock magazine has a very simple layout where sub heading and strapline are positioned at the side of the magazine and the picture of "Areosmith" centre in the middle of thefront page. By looking at the front page you can immediatelty see it is more of a rock magazines by the way the man is positioned and by the way he looks. His clothes are more what a rocky person would wear as the colours are quiet dull, the expression and stance from the top half of his body also reprentsent the rock theme as it is an opened expression which is how rock is expressed. On the front front page there are many different styles of writing round the out side you have more of a bold font and in the middle it is more of a fancy desing where they have written AREOSMITH so it can stand out. The main reasons for doing so is to probaly attract the readers attention by using representation of an american hard rock band. The actual front page itself is quiet informal and the picture really shows this as it represent rock really well and they ahve used a lot of content on the page as there are lots of straplines and a big masthead CLASSIC ROCK.

The magazines target audience would be mainly teenagers or young adults and especially does who are rock fans as the whole magazine is based soley around this type of genre. This magzine along with vibe also do monthly issues and is priced at £4.25 which is an average price as most music magazine just do monthly issues instead of weekly as it may be consider as a better selling point for them as if they do weekly they may have to charge more for the costs of production. Conventions used are quote in the front page "i walked where jesus walked" of someone from a rock band quoting it and the pictures expression as it show how people may relate to rock music.

An RnB Magazine:

Billboard magzine is an american magazine which is devoted to the music industry, in their issues they make sure the may track for their target audience the most popular songs and abulm in various catergories.They used billboard 100 regardless of the genre to do so and is frequently used as the standard measure for ranking songs in the United States, while the Billiboard 200 survey is the corresponding chart for ablums sales. The company of the magazine is run by The Nielsen Companys which is a Dutch-American media conglomerate, headquartered in New york and is one of the world leading suppliers of marketing information.it was first ever founded in Cincinnati in 1894 and became a paper based on entertainment and is now devoted only to the music industry.It editor is, Scott A. McKenzie.

At this current time billboard cover the whole of the music industry:

• Radio
• Television
• CD
• DVD
• Video cassette
• Sales and internet music downloads

Compared to the other two magazines CLASSIC ROCK and VIBE there layout is cleary very informal however Billboards show a different side and is more formal. On the front page there is not really a lot to look at everything is layed ot very neatly down the page using the consitent colourses blue and pink to stand out on the light background, All the straplins and subheading are positioned directly down the sides of the front page in colums. They have a mid shot of Mary j blige looking very sophisticated, sleek and silm to represent the formal and more professional side of the RnB magazine and to show that the type of music is more low pitched and slow compared to rock or hip hop. They've clearly stated their logo BILLBOARD at the top of the magazine along with the artist name so target audience know the main focus of the magzine.

The target audience of the magazine is more likely to be people of any age and those who are fans of RnB. It is also reprsentedc from the front page that it is not for one audience in particular but for many audiences as it does not only catergorizes its magazine on RnB but on many different genre of music that are popular in the charts today.Another comparasion that can be made is that it is a weekly magazine rather than a monthly which is why they may price it slightly cheaper.

We decided to look at three different genres HIPHOP,ROCK and RnB to get a better idea of the kinds of research they have carried out to represent and show to people there genre so when it come to use producing our own magazines we can use all the information we have learn't from our research and and our preliminary task to produce the best magazine possible, making sure we include the used of the MIGRAIN MODEL.