Deciding my genre

Why I decided grime   

I have decided to make a grime music magazine, I have chosen this as its quite unique and is one that I personally listen to so will be easier as I am part of the target audience and I will know the types of things I need to include in my magazine.

Background of grime

Grime is a genre of music and is the indie music genre. It has emerged in East London in the early 2000's, it became more mainstream due to people like Dizzee Rascal, Wiley, Lethal Bizzle and Kano. Since this it has received exposure from television stations like Channel AKA and is on the radio on stations like BBC Radio 1Xtra, this has made grime more mainstream and now has a wide target audience but still has a main stereotype audience. Grime is very similar to rap, a lot of rappers do a lot of grime, for example Chip who is a rapper but does grime as well. 

Examples of grime music magazines

Looking at these examples have given me a clear idea of the things I need to include in my magazine and how institutions of grime magazines attract their target audience by the way they design their magazine. 

Audience of grime

The gender of the audience of grime is male, this is because males are the ones who mostly listen to grime, this is also supported from my survey because all of the grime votes for their favourite music genre were from males, and when I design my magazine, I will need to make it masculine to attract the target audience. It used to be mainly people of black ethnicity who liked grime but now that it has become more popular, all different ethnicities listen to it, but is still mainly people of the black ethnicity, and this is what I will need to consider when making my magazine. The people who listen to it wear quite 'chavy' clothing, which I will consider when taking my pictures for my magazine because it will make the audience have a relationship with my magazine. The target audience will be people of lower class, in the DE group of the social grading scale, so my magazine will need to be common to this, for example using quite simple language and slang words because they will not be that academically skilled and will understand slang because that is the type of words that they use. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grime_music

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/02/the-guardian-view-on-grime-music-sound-of-protest

Survey questions and answers

To help me decide my genre I have decided to create a survey, I gave the surveys to my friends, people from my school and my family. These are the questions I asked and the results I got back.

Question 1
Q. What is your gender?
A. 9 Males and 6 Females.

Question 2
Q. How old are you?
A. There were seven 16 years olds, five 17 year olds, one 22 year old and two 45 year olds.

Question 3
Q. What is your favourite music genre?
A. Grime (4), Rock (2), Pop (3), Rap (1) Drum & base (2) and house (3)

Question 4
Q. Do you read music magazines or would want to?
A. Yes (11) No (4)

Question 5
Q. How often do you listen to music in a normal week?
A. 0-2 hours (4), 3-5 hours (6) and 6 hours or more (5)

Question 6
Q. When I make a magazine, would you be interested in purchasing it?
A. Yes (15), no (0)

Question 7
Q. How much would you be willing to spend on a magazine?
A. £0-£1 (7), £2-£3 (4), £4-£5 (2), £6 or more (2)

From this I have seen how things like age are related to the type of music genre they listen to, this will help me with deciding the specific target audience and what ideology they portray. There were some problems with my survey, these problems are that some of the questions that I originally had in my survey, I had to get rid of because they would have been pointless due to the fact I couldn't get a wide range of different ethnicities and different locations where people live.

Audience research - British social grading scales

Social Grade	Description	% HRP population (UK)
AB	Higher & intermediate managerial, administrative, professional occupations	22.17
C1	Supervisory, clerical & junior managerial, administrative, professional occupations	30.84
C2	Skilled manual occupations	20.94
DE	Semi-skilled & unskilled manual occupations, Unemployed and lowest grade occupations	26.05

This social grading scale will help me with my decision in choosing a target audience. This is because I can get a good idea of the type of lifestyle the target audience have. The percentages on the right hand side will help me with seeing the amount of people that are in each group and seeing how this links to their job and income. This will give me an idea of their lifestyle and the type of things they are interested in. On the Isle of Wight, there isn't many people in the group 'AB' so I can target my magazine to the other groups to get a wider target audience. Institutions of music magazines will have to take this into consideration when making a magazine, this will help them with everything they chose to include and how it relates to the genre they have chosen, for example choosing specific colours that have a particular message. Different music genres have different target audiences, for example the music genre grime has a stereotyped audience of  teens/early twenties, chavs, wear tracksuits, black ethnicity, male, this would probably be located in the 'DE' so the institutions who design the magazines will consider all the things they need to include to hope to appeal to the particular music genre.

Deconstruction of double page spread 2

I have decided to analyse a grime double page spread as I am planning to do a grime music magazine, so I need to know the type of things they include and how they attract their audience.

The artist of this magazine is a grime artist called 'D Double E', he is located on the left side of the page as this is a hotspot for the audience to look at first and would therefore would be intrigued into wanting to read the interview on the right hand side, he is also an iconic figure in grime music which will attract the grime audience further. The colours of this double page spread are black, white and blue, this is to go with the models outfit and it gives the magazine a simplistic view as it only uses a limited amount of colours and avoids it looking too crowded and compact, it doesn't follow the forms and conventions of grime magazines as the use of baby blue is quite a strange option to use as you normally associate grime with darker colours and white as the exception, the institution could have done this to give their magazine a unique look to attract a wider audience and attract the wide range of sub genres associated with grime. This simplicity of this has a greater affect as it is more aesthetically pleasing to the eye. The mise en scene of this is also important to the style of the magazine as the artist is wearing a body warmer and a flat cap, this represents grime music as it is common to what grime artists wear and what the grime audience wear. The masthead located on the top right hand side states the artist's name and further links to the colour scheme as it is also the colours blue and black on a white background to make it stand out more. The institution of this magazine has highlighted the most important quote of the magazine and located it away from the interview and put it in a large bold font to almost tease the audience into wanting to read the article. This double page spread doesn't follow the forms and conventions of usual double page spreads as it only portrays one main column, although the writing is paragraphed in a way that it doesn't look like there's as much writing, this is because the audience might be put off by the fact that there is a big chunk of writing. The artist is in mid shot and has an indirect gaze, this is to give the artist an emotive look as the article is about his tough journey to become an iconic figure of grime, this links to the quote next to him "It's been hard, but now i'm on top". Their is also a secondary image of the artist which is also quite a rare thing in double page spreads as there is usually only one main image, this change could be because the main image of him has an indirect gaze so the institution could have wanted to include a direct gaze to, to make a connection between him and the audience, while the main image shows the emotive side of the article. This article can be seen as an inspirational message to the audience to never give up on their dreams no matter how hard it is and that the article in this magazine can be a role model to young unestablished grime artists.

Deconstruction of double page spread 1

I could not find out the name of the magazine that this double-page spread is from but because Nicki Minaj is on there then it is quite obviously a pop magazine.

The colour palette for this double page is mainly pink, black and white. The pink symbolises the femininity and is associated with little girls. This is to attract the target audience because teen girls stereo typically are attracted to the colour pink because it looks pretty. The black and white are used to stand out as they contrast each other and also bring attention to the pink. The main image is of Nicki Minaj, she is used because she is an iconic figure for pop music and this will attract the ideology of the target audience. The photo is in mid shot and has a direct gaze to intrigue the audience, it also has a male gaze because Nicki Minaj is a sexual figure and will attract the male audience which will attract a wider audience than the stereotype. The image also overlaps all the text and the text is curved around her to show her importance which links to the fact she is a well known celebrity. The headline in this double-page spread is 'THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO' which is in two different fonts and colours to the subject name underneath which is 'NICKI MINAJ' this shows the importance of Nicki Minaj because it is in a different font, a bigger font and a different colour. It is used to show the audience who the artist is, just in case they do not know who it is, it is used to persuade the audience to carry on reading. The quotes used in this are "I really toned down the sexual stuff. There was no need for me to do it". This is chosen as the quote because it is a key piece of information and will make the reader want to read the full interview. It is highlighted in a darker shade of pink then the rest and is in bold black and white font and is bigger than the text in the article to make it appeal and stand out to the reader. The main image is located in the centre of the double page and this to bring more attention to her. There are 5 columns which subverts to the conventions of a double page spread but it still separates the writing and makes it look like less so the reader is more likely to read it. There is also a drop capital to show to the audience where to start reading and is also in the feminine pink. I could not find the institution that this magazine is from, but I can tell that it is a big institution because they would have had to get Nicki Minaj to model for it and she is a very famous pop artist.


In my opinion, I think this is a good double-page spread because it clearly targets the audience of pop by the way it has been designed, everything they have included is relevant and is carefully chosen to attract the target audience, this is what I will need to consider when designing my double page spread because this is how institutions sell so many issues is by audience research.

Conventions of a double-page spread

Colour scheme

The colour scheme for double page spreads are normally only a few different colours, like in this example the colours are; black, white, yellow and white. There will always be a particular colour scheme in each double page spread. It could sometimes even relate to the particular artist, for example Wiz Khalifa has a song called 'Black and yellow' and these are colours used.

Main image

The main image in a double page spread is always a large photo of a music artist and is located either on half of either the left or right like in this example or goes across the whole double page. It is often an iconic figure to the particular music genre their magazine portrays, for example this is Vibe magazine which is a hip hop genre magazine and they have use Wiz Khalifa who is an iconic figure as he is a rapper but does songs with hip hop artists. 

Headline

The headline is the biggest text on the screen and is usually a quote from the interview below, but in this particular example the headline is 'WK'.

Stand first

This is the bit above the article and is the artist who is in the article, because if the reader doesn't know who he is reading about then it will be pointless so they might need to inform people who don't know the particular artist. 

Quote  

There is often a quote used from the interview on the page and it is sometimes used as the headline, this is to entice the reader into reading the full interview because the short quote is interesting and intrigues the audience into reading the article, but unfortunately it is not in this particular example.

The text

The text is always 11pt in a double page spread and is in 2-4 columns, this is to make it look neat and not all over the page. The page number, magazine name and text throughout is normally in the same font and the text is sometimes related to the genre of the magazine.

Conventions of a contents page

The masthead
The masthead is usually located at the top of the page so it seen as the title of the magazine and is often followed by the word 'contents'. The masthead is the same for each particular brand of magazine, for example Q magazine always has the same letter Q in the same location of every issue, this is to create audience identification.

Main image
The main image is usually very big and the takes up the majority of the page, and is normally a well known singer and band to attract the particular genre that the magazine is representing. It also will link to the type of information that is on the contents page and is of the same music genre.

Column structure
There are commonly 3 or 4 columns on a contents page and this is to make the information easy to read and seems like less text then one big paragraph across the page. Each particular issue will keep the same column structure throughout all their issues to create audience identification.

Articles
Articles are normally organised into regular and feature. Regular being the articles that are there in every issue and feature articles are ones that are only usually only in there as a one off or not regular. The articles relate to the music genre portrayed by the main image and the genre of the particular magazine.

Page numbers

The page number are commonly pretty large and sometimes in a different font and colour so that it is easy for the reader to locate the particular page that they want, and these are next to the specific article that the page is on.

Subheadings
These are a few words and are in big bold font to make it stand out to the audience and they briefly explain the article.

Design and layout
The design and layout is the same for each particular magazines contents pages, this is to create audience identification and make it easy for the reader to locate things.