Profiling my audience

To help profile my audience I will be researching a magazine that is similar to the one I intend to produce. Whilst doing this I will try and find out how to satisfy my target audience and how to in gage other audiences to make my product more successful. Whilst doing my research, I found magazines with the same genre as the one that I want to produce such as, The Source and Vibe who are both magazines that have relation to the type of magazine that I want to produce, I also found a magazine which is very close to this type of genre and this magazine is called XXL, this magazine I believe is the right one for me to look at as I’ve worked on it before and know a bit about it, its also relevant because of its genre which is hip-hop, and this is the path I want to go down.

I am looking at XXL magazine which is a hip hop music magazine. I have chosen this magazine because it’s of a similar genre to the one that I intend to produce. XXL magazine is a magazine that I’m a bit familiar with since I did an analysis on one of their front covers. An XXL magazine I have noticed seems to only consist of male dominated front covers and I think this reflects on the masterhead ‘XXL’. The way they presented it on the cover is good because it’s bold, bright and clear for the audience to see. The colours that are used are very effective (red, black and white) and the reason for this is because these are dominant colours, they are also big and bold and this connotes masculinity. The font used for the masthead is serif font and it works well with the colours because it is very masculine.

A BIT ABOUT THE HISTORY OF XXL

Since 1997, XXL has competed with hip-hop powerhouse magazines such as the source and Vibe. It was founded by former source staffer Jules Winnfield, as well as others who wanted to create a better magazine than The Source, which they felt was compromised because Benzino, a Boston, Massachusetts-based rapper and associate of The Source publisher David Mays, were believed to be influencing the editorial content and rating system. The magazine's editors have included Elliott Wilson (?-2008, formerly of ego trip and The Source and Datwon Thomas (2008-, formerly Editor-In-Chief of King).
In December 2006, XXL took over the hip-hop producer/DJ magazine Scratch (another title owned by Harris Publications), rebranding it as "XXL Presents Scratch Magazine". It shut down in September 2007. Other titles with limited runs have also been launched under the XXL umbrella, including Hip-Hop Soul, Eye Candy Magazine and Shade45 Magazine. The majority of this information was found in wikipedia. On the website however they use quite alot of dark colours which is not a surprise to me as, most of their front covers are very dark and masculine. The site also uses some unusual colloquial language and I think this is to attract their target audience by writing the way that most American hip hop artists speak, and I think this is a very intelligent thing to do and I would like to use this technique when making my product.

finished, Front cover, contents page and double page spread

The front cover





















The contents page




















The double page spread

pictures for my magazine

All the photos above are all photos that i took by myself. I took more than three so that i could pick which ones were better for me to use for my product. I took five vertical and one horizontal. Most of the shots were medium shots because i thought that they were relevent shots for the front cover.

drafting pages for school magazine (front cover nd contents)

double page spread analysis

Denotation: This double page spread consists of a colour photograph of three males behind bars. These males all share a cell in the prison. It is a medium long shot of the men and I know this because you can see each person from their heads to their knee/shin and hide’s their feet so the audience do not know what they are wearing on their feet. The men are all wearing the same thing and look very depressed, this has obviously been done purposely to show how it feels to be in prison. Their face expressions are all different but they all in different ways connote boredom, stress and also show that they are powerless, the way the two on the right are holding the bars shows this, and makes them look weak and show that they can’t do anything about being in there.

The background of the picture is the wall of the cell and it is a green and I think this is important because green is a very peaceful colour and it is also found on the walls in a hospitals to keep patients calm. So the fact that the walls are green could connote that the prison is trying to keep the criminals calm for as if the walls were red this would connote anger and stress and it would be very disturbing for them. I have also noticed that their facial expressions seem to reflect on the colour of the walls because they look reasonably calm and not disturbed or angry. The wall has different shades of green and this looks like the dirt that has been gathered up over the past years and this could mean that the prison is an old one.

‘Straight path’ this is on the first page of this double page spread and its in serif writing it is big and bold and is also green but very pale. This connotes, the people in the cell moving forward in life after they get out but it also connotes masculinity and that men are natually strong. The masthead is the most noticeable aspect on the double page spread. Above this there is some text which explains that there are a lot of ‘mc’s’ and more and more of them seem to get into prison and this magazine ‘XXL’ go to the prisons to interview them. On the right, the second page of the spread is a list of some other artists I think, that also ‘mc’. On the far right on the same page is the interview that ‘XXL’ took of them.

contents pages

planning- front covers for college magazine