Research Into R'n'B/Hip-Hop Artists

Christopher Maurice "Chris" Brown (born May 5, 1989) is an American singer-songwriter, dancer, rapper, and actor. He made his recording debut in late 2005 with the self-titled album Chris Brown at the age of 16. The album featured the hit single "Run It!", which topped the Billboard Hot 100, making Brown the first male artist as a lead to have his debut single top the chart since Puff Daddy in 1997. The album has sold over two million copies in the United States and was certified double Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). Brown's second studio album, Exclusive was released worldwide in November 2007. It spawned two successful singles; his second U.S. number one hit, "Kiss Kiss" featuring T-Pain and "With You", which peaked at number two on the Billboard Hot 

Aubrey Drake Graham (born October 24, 1986), who records under the mononym Drake, is a Canadian recording artist and actor. He originally became known for playing Jimmy Brooks on the television series Degrassi: The Next Generation.
In June 2009, Drake signed a recording contract with Lil Wayne's Young Money Entertainment.  Drake has also won several awards, including two Juno Awards in 2010 for Best New Artist, and Rap Recording of the Year.

Tremaine "Trey" Aldon Neverson (born November 28, 1984), better known by his stage name Trey Songz, is an American singer-songwriter, rapper, record producer and actor. His debut album, I Gotta Make It, was released in 2005, while his second album, Trey Day, was released in 2007. His third album, Ready, was released in 2009 while his fourth studio album, Passion, Pain & Pleasure, was released on September 14, 2010.

Research Into Magazine Front Pages

This Magazine is called 'The Source' which is an R'n'B/Rap Magazine. As we can see from the main image there is a picture of one of the biggest stars in the music industry, Rapper Lil Wayne. This picture straight away informs us on what type of audience this magazine is for...young people both male and female who have an interest in R'n'B and Rap musicians.

We can see that there is a very good use of colour in this magazine. For example the main colours used here are Red, White and Black. These colours all match the colours of the Rappers clothing. This shows good consistency and a good use of colour match and combination.

The writing in the magazine is not too much. We can see that the Main magazine name is large and captures the eyes of the reader and all the other stories are smaller. The subject and features on this magazine are all music related which makes it relevant to the target audience.

                        

This magazine is called 'Vibe'. This magazine is also known  to be a R'n'B/Rap magazine. This is evident from the artist in the image 'Chris Brown' who is know for his R'n'B songs. The use of this artist helps make it clear to us what genre the magazine is for and that the target audience will be also for young people aged 16 -26 who are into R'n'B/Rap music.

In this magazine there is a variety of colours used, such as White, Red, Black, Green and Yellow. The colours used in the text kind of match the clothing of the artist and the environment in which the artist is in. This creates consistency and makes the magazine look clear and appealing. The writing is set out differently from the magazine above. Here the writing is aligned to the left and the right unlike 'The Source' magazine in which there is only writing aligned to the left.  The fact that the image is overlapping the magazine name is good as it makes it look interesting and shows a very good use of space. This is easier than just cramming a load of words at the top followed by the magazine name which will leave not much space for the image.

Magazine Analysis - NME (Cover)

Front Cover

The name of this magazine is NME which stands for New Musical Express. This may connote that they do ont only promote stars in the music industry but also ucoming stars and new artists.The title logo NME is in big block capital letters which stand out clearly. This may emphasise the solidity of the magaizne and may underline that it is  a stable and informative music magazine.The main image is a picture of the music artist Florence and the machine guns. She is dressed in vintage clothing which relates to the vintage theme of the front cover. She has a kind of innocent looking body language with a gaze directed straight at the reader. On the front page there is another pictrue of another artist this is because they are giving away a free poster of him. THis is a way to draw in more readers.The use of fonts in the magazine are very interesting and were obviously picked out carefiully. It is evident from thei image thath the colour of the font are very similar to way the model is wearing. For example the white font matched the white shirt, they red matches the colour of her hair and the black matches the colour of her waist coat. The magazine also uses different types fo fonts, for example the block font for the logo and for the word 'Florence' a block font has been used but has been reduced in width and has been given the italic effect. The cover does not similar to othe rmagazine, this is because of the use of the two images. The second image i sthere as a unique selling point. Instead of the reader seeing 'free poster' making them search thought out the paper tp find it, NME has put the picture on the front page to show us what poster they are offering us.

Research Into R'n'B Music

R'n'B is a music genre that combines elements of Hip Hop, Soul, R&B and funk.

Although the abbreviation R&B originates from traditional rhythm and blues music, today the term R&B is most often used to describe a style of African American music originating after the demise of disco in the 1980s.

Contemporary R&B has a polished record production style, drum machine-backed rhythms, an occasional saxophone-laced beat to give a jazz feel and a smooth, lush style of vocal arrangement. Electronic influences are becoming an increasing trend, and the use of hip hop or dance inspired beats are typical, although the roughness and grit inherent in hip hop may be reduced and smoothed out. Contemporary R&B vocalists are often known for their use of melisma, popularized by vocalists such as Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey.


An example of an R'n'B magazine is: 

From the front page of this Magazine we can see that this is a R'n'B  from the
full blown picture of 'Trey Songz' a big R'n'B star in the music industry. You can also see that the magazine from the words that are used, such as 'RnB' and the mentioning of other artists in the RnB industry.

Here is an example of RnB music:

And here is an example of Rap Music:

Names For My Magazine

Here i can up with 8 potential names for my Music Magazine. The type of Magazine want to do is a R'n'B Magazine so i made sure the names sounded like or related to that genre and not to something like Rock Music. At first i was kind of stuck and confused on what type of names to pick so i decided to look at current R'n'B Magazines in the music industry such as 'RAP UP' and 'Vibe' Magazine. (grap pics of mag titles)
These are what i came up with:

• ACAPELLA
• DYNAMICS
• DYNA-MIX
• ECHO
• VIBZER
• SOUND WAVE
• BAZZ
• FUSE
• FUSION
• FULL BASS

These are all potential names as i not sure yet which one i will choose. I feel that the best way for me to pick and appropriate name is to ask fellow students in the school. This way i will have a better idea of which one of the Magazine Names will sound and look better on my Music Magazine Page

I decided to ask 18 friends to pick two names they like out of the 10 choices which where available and these are what they picked:

Magazine Analysis - Kerrang

General

• The company that produces the rock magazine 'Kerrang'is Bauer Consumer Media in the UK

• The target audience for this magazine is 16-25 year olds. The main target audience are rock fans as this is a rock magazine. (Show evidence of this)                        
  

• The price for this magazine is £2.20. This price is appropriate as this will appeal to the target audience which will be student or young workers.
   
• The magazine is published weekly.         
  
  
• The total circulation sales for 'Kerrang' magazine is 52,272 within the UK and The Republic Of Ireland
  
  
• The approximate monthly revenue streams from advertising is...
  

The cover

•  The  name of the magazine is  'Kerrang' which connotes with the sound an  electric guitars make. This should mean that the magazine is aimed at people who play the electric guitar or listen to heavy metal music. (Grab Picture of thi
  

• The masthead/title logo says 'Kerrang' and the font used has jagged sides which gives it an electric tone or feeling. The masthead/title logo also has straight white lines going through it giving it a smashed effect which further implies the heavy metal value.
  
• The Main image is a man dressed up in a clown mask, a red jump suit and black leather gloves. You can tell he is wearing a mask and not just painted his face because some facial features like hi eyebrows and cheeks are exaggerated and look plastic. Also his eyes are black which shows his face is covered. The facial expression of the clown is happy/excited as both eyebrows are raised and he also has a big cheeky smile. The clown's direction of gaze and body language is facing forward towards the reader which shows interaction to the reader. Also it is standing up straight with his legs together which makes it look like he is watching the reader.
  
• Across the top are small images of rock bands. This attracts their target customers because it shows that posters are available inside the'Magazine'. There is also an image of a motor head wine bottle. These images review and introduce new or old bands and are shown inside the magazine as well.
  

Inside

• The 'Kerrang' Magazine consists of 63 pages
  
• Out of the 63 pages 19 of them were advertisements
  
• There were 2 Games adverts, 11 Tickets Adverts, 2 personal goods adverts, 4 CD/DVD Adverts and 1 Clothing advert.
• They  were categorised into Reviews, Feedback, Reviews and Posters
• The magazine had 14 double page spreads in which 3 spreads were just talking about artists, 3 spreads were review articles of shows and 3 souble page spreads were dedicated to how one band rose to success.
• The magazine has a house stlye which is consistent through out the magazine with the logo on each page and sometimes having a similar set out when it came to the double page spreads. Throughout the magazine whether it was different double page spreads, reviews or advertise meant the colours were kept simple but attract, for example there would be no more than 3/4 colours used on each page.

Contents Page

This is my Contents Page for my School Magazine. I used my tree diagram from my Preliminary Planning to help my find topics that were appropriate in to my Contents. I feel that each topic is relevant and will appeal to my readers. For example as it is a boys School, there would be very high interests in Games and Sports so i decided that putting this will make it a lot more interesting. I also included events and updates to keep the readers informed and up to date with what is going on in the school. I made sure the Contents Page connected with the Front Page so that if the two pages were separated and you were to find them in different places you will know that they are from the same Magazine. This is good as it shows Consistency and House Style. I also decided to enlarge and fade the school logo into the background of the page to make it look more interesting.

Preliminary Task

Here is my School Magazine Front Cover which i designed myself. I decided to call it ''Wilmo Plus' as i wanted a name that sounded different and excited. I first pick many other names such as 'WGSB Weekly' and 'Wilmo Info' but i felt that 'Wilmo Plus' sounded better. I also decided to use the standard colours of the school which were Yellow and Blue as it related to the school badge and also that if students were to walk past and see the Magazine they would straight away know its for there school. The topics on the Front Page i felt were relevant and  interesting as they all related to the time of year where Results are coming back and major events are taking place. Personally i feel the front page for this Magazine is good and will connect with the readers through the use of the topics, pictures and colours.

Preliminary Planning

Here is the diagram i used to plan out what i was going to put on my Magazine (Front Page and Contents Page) This diagram is what i will use to help create my school Magazine. As you can has many different ideas which can be either used for my Contents Page or Front Page. Doing this will make things easier and clearer to create a good Magazine.

 

AS BRIEF

Preliminary exercise: using DTP and an image manipulation program, produce the front page of a new school/college magazine, featuring a photograph of a student in medium close-up plus some appropriately laid-out text and a masthead. Additionally you must produce a mock-up of the layout of the contents page to demonstrate your grasp of DTP. 

Main Task: the front page, contents and double page spread of a new music magazine (if done as group task, each member of the group to produce an individual edition of the magazine, following the same house style).