My Feature Article Artist

For my feature article I am going to be interviewing the now huge hip hop duo known as Dirty Code!
Dirty Code are built up of 2 male artists who

 specialize in the hip hop genre. They were both born into families deep in poverty in Compton, USA and they first were inspired to get into music a few years after the famous NWA became worldwide sensations. Their involvement in music started when they were both best friends at an extremely young age (6 years old). They got involved as they had to busk with their families using pots and pans to make a beat and try and earn some money so that their families could have food.
At the age of 14 and 16 the formely known Donovan Rowland  and Tyrese Leonard formed Dirty Code and began to be noticed by people when Tyrese started singing instead of using pots. This earned them a lot of recognition in Compton and on the 4th of March 2011 came their big break! Children in need went over to Compton and Dirty Code was asked to perform due to their recognition in Compton. They sang their new song called Barriers and got the chance to put the song on You Tube. The song became viral a week after children in need after gaining 20 million you tube views and Dirty Code got signed by a professional music agency! In the last 2 years they have gone on to bring out 2 albums and gain 37 million views on spotify for their smash hit Break. This overall has lead to Dirty Code becoming one of the most likable and well known duo's in the world.

Why Anthem is interviewing Dirty Code:
 Anthem is interviewing them as Dirty Code wants their brand new music headphones company to get recognition. It is called Pulse and are high quality headphones, speakers and earplugs for a cheap price.
Anthem also decided to interview Dirty Code as their new brand fits in well with Anthems genre as Dirty Code are high in the charts but also now offer good technology news. That means that the target audience should be happy with the magazine.

A mood board for Dirty Code:

House Style

The main style i want in my magazine is a simple yet professional looking magazine. Therefore getting across the main details in my magazine in an easy to understand way.
Font:
The fonts that i am going to use in my magazine are going to be sans seriff in normal blocks of text, for example when my main artist is answering questions in the feature article. However this will change for headings e.g. saying what is included in the contents page. Then the font will be seriff perhaps a font like Trajan Pro. I am going to use a seriff font for my heading as seriff fonts tend to stand out more and look a bit more professional and this is important for headings in my magazine as they are the parts of the magazine that people are going to read out first so therefore they need to look more professional. As well as that seriff fonts will most likely be deployed for the questions in my feature article interview as then the reader can easily determine the difference between who's speaking. Finally the colour of font that i am going to use is most likely going to be red for text headings and white for the actual text. I have chosen these two colours for the font as they are professional and look good together.

Colour Scheme:
The predominant colours that i am going to include in my magazine are going to be red, white, grey and black.
I am going to use grey and black as a background on the pages (especially clear on the front cover) with at the top of the page the colour being a faint black but then the page fading down to become a light grey colour. I have got this idea using inspiration from billboard magazine as they often use background colours on their front cover with one colour fading into another colour.
I am then going to use the colour white for most my normal text as it is a simple colour that is clear and easy to read but does not take your eye off the other more important images and colours on the page.
Finally i am going to use the red colour for text heading on every page as the colour red will clearly stand out against the grey colour. I have also got the idea of using red with black from NME magazine in which they use red and black as their colour scheme and it comes across very professionally and clearly.

Visual Features:

A visual feature that i am looking to include on every page of my magazine is just the A from my masthead. I have chose this because it will be clear to everyone that the A stands for Anthem but it just creates a more professional look for the magazine. I am going to put this visual feature in the top left hand corner as everyone reads from left to right so will therefore see the A for anthem straight away.

My final masthead design

Masthead Design

Name Planning

Readership Profile

My Final Choice

I have decided to do a mix of some of my initial ideas as my final decision for my music magazine. I am going to do a up today music news and technology magazine. I have decided to do this because it is unique and has rarely been done before. The magazine is going to include information about new music technology e.g. headphones and information about music away from technology e.g. the charts of the week.

I chose to do a music technology and news magazine due to some of the results from my audience research questionnaire. The results that affected my decision are that i realised how much people used technology from my question asking what platform people will most likely view the magazine on. This showed me how much technology is involved in our lives and therefore how much room there is in the market for a music technology magazine. Another thing that affected my decision was the fact that there was no genre that anybody wanted to be included in particular. This made me not want to focus completely on one genre e.g. rock as it would close off a large proportion of the target audience. The final decision i made due to my target audience questionnaire was that Billboard magazine was the far and away most popular magazine. This affected my decision as Billboard focuses on a variety of genres but include things such as new technology and exclusive interviews which is another thing i may focus on. I also decided not to focus fully on technology due to the fact that i believe that the magazine would get very repetitive and some weeks would struggle to get interesting information.

The target audience i have chosen is going to be mainly focused at males aged from 15- 25 years old. However the magazine can also be easily readable for females. I decided to choose this target audience due to the fact that stereo-typically males are a lot more into technology. As well as that i chose that age range due to the fact that people between 15- 25 year olds are a lot more interested in technological developments and chart news. The magazine is also multi gender in some scenarios as men and women enjoy keeping up with chart information and getting chances to read exclusive interviews.

The type of artists that may be included in the music magazine is people like Dr Dre. He may be included due to his involvement with beats headphones and his music with the NWA. He would be a perfect person to be interviewed as he would fit the target audience and both parts of the magazine technology and music.
Another artist i am thinking of including in the magazine is the person top of the charts at the end of each week. I think that this would be a great idea as the artists top of the charts are usually extremely popular so therefore the audience would want to read about them.

Visual Elements
Elements that i may include in my magazine are bright colours which were hugely requested during my questionnaire. This will make my magazine stand out compared to others. I also think that on my front cover i am going to include a black and white image to create a more retro look to go against my technology and new theme. A idea i may include on my front cover is a man/ women listening to music with headphones on. I think this would be good as it would immediately attract in the target audience.



  

Initial Ideas for my music magazine

Audience Research

House Style

NME House Style

NME is effective because it often uses direct address to involve the reader. The convention that is most dominant however is the colour scheme, the main text is red however headlines about celebrities are often in a white colour to make them stand out. NME magazine also uses the rule of thirds by always placing their masthead in the top left of the screen. This masthead stays the same in every magazine creating a brand to the magazine that people always recognise. Adding to that NME often uses a san- seriff font within their coverlines, this coverline nearly always links with the main image. A feature often used within NME magazine is the ordered coverlines on the front cover this gives a professional look to the magazine and does not overpower the reader.
Things that NME always do with their feature articles to attract in the target audience are using a large image on one page of the artists being interviewed. They also always use a font to suit the band/ artists genre. For example Teen Spirit are a rock band and the font used is bold and powerful like rock music.



Kerrang Magazine

Contents page analysis

What the readers thought of the contents page:

• It looks professional.
• They said it suits the house style well.
• The image shows what to expect inside.
• They did not think enough information about the articles was included. 

What the readers thought of the contents page:

• It is set out in a clear and chronological order.
• A substantial amount of data is given about each main article.
• The page numbers are clearly stated.
• Different types of article are split up well e.g. music, film etc.
• They said that the colours are quite bland and do not stand out.