PLANNING: 'HIPHOP' Case Study

Volume 10 issue 12

Hip hop Weekly magazine is an American hip hop news and entertainment magazine founded in 2006. The magazine covers celebrity news, music, film, fashion, sports and features exclusive interviews with many notable figures within popular hip hop culture.

Front cover

In my opinion, the front cover of ‘Hip Hop’ magazine looks really cluttered and unprofessional due to the large font and array of cover lines. The masthead on the front reads ‘Hip Hop Weekly’ and is placed behind Drake and Meek Mill’s head, this lets the reader know that the stars are more important and also that the stars are more important than the magazine itself.  There are two different fonts on the front cover, one being the mast head and the other being cover lines. There are lots of teasers on the front cover, one in the top left hand corner, designed too look like a page turning reading ‘R.I.P. BOBBI KRISTINA BROWN PASSES AWAY AT 22’ this will draw people to want to read it because we naturally read from left to right so it will get noticed first. As well as ‘plus inside’ stating lots of singers along the bottom.

The image on the front is from paparazzi and has no correspondence to the text, the two cover stars have simply been edited together. The images of Drake and Meek Mill on the front both happen to be directly looking at the camera which makes us feel like we have to read he article because of the strong gaze.

There is a colour scheme of blue red and yellow and white, which I think helps to make it look cluttered. 

Contents page

The contents page is split into 3 columns and has two photos.

There are 5 departments; word on the street, style, entertainment, music and web watch. I think this whole magazine is a shambles because the contents page has the smallest resemblance to the front cover as the colour scheme here is pink and purple. The contents page is in chronological order

Double page spread
The DPS I studied was in a q&a structure with award winning singer Miguel. I recognised the q&a structure because the questions were printed in pink and Miguel's answers in black. there isn't any pull quotes however in the centre there is cover art of his new album.
The relationship between the text and the image isn't great because there is no caption or anything telling the reader who Miguel is if they didn't have an idea. The mast head really has no correlation to the rest of the article as it is in red and it is called 'The New Look.' The image connotes rock music because of the white leather jacket with zips he is wearing although this is a hip hop magazine so this is quite hypocritical.

Eleanor