The source Case study

The Source is a music magazine mostly influenced by American culture as it is
a US based magazine.
It discusses music such as Rap, hip hop and R&B but however they occasionally discuss politics and culture. This is dictated by the type of music that is being featured in the edition. It was founded in 1988, some may call this the peak of rap with artists such as ICE T, Biggie smalls and 2pac taking the stage and dominating the rap world. More ethnicities became aware of rap eventually. It is the 2nd longest running rap magazine after UK based publication hip hop connection.
It all began with two students; Jon Shecter and David Mays, who attended Harvard university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. They then decided to hire their college friends James Benard (as senior editor) and Ed Young (as associate publisher), and the four men immediately became shareholders in the ownership of the magazine.
The magazines head offices were moved from Massachusetts to New York in 1990 in order to expand the publicity of the magazine and make it more known to the public. New York is a good location because it is the birth place of rap culture. Places such as Queens and Harlem are notoriously known for their black culture and rap was mostly influenced by black culture.

The source uses many colours and fonts depending on the edition of the magazine but in most covers the colours red,black,white.
Red is very convenient because it con notates things such as passion
(For rap/music) blood related to violence such as gun crime in the ghettos which is where rap music originated from. Black is technically not a colour, it consists of no colour where as white is every spectrum of colour. Black represents no way out as their is no light to guide people, the people who mostly read this magazine have been through some tough times so when the color white is introduced their is some sort of hope. In addition black contrasts very well with red and it is widley used with my generations style for example air jordans which my target audience would instantly recognize for its notorious symbol of jordan flying with a basketball in his hand. This associates with my audience as they are young teens with what maslow would like to recall as aspirations, therefore they are aspirers. They look at all the latest fashion trends in both music and other things such as clothes. air jordan is just a minimal example of all the other trends. In particular air jordans because jordan himself originated from a very poor class family having to work hard to get where he is which is what most teens of that class are up against.
It also has patriotic aspects as red,blue,black and white are all in the American flag and America is known as a patriotic country.
Take the magazine cover at the top for example, it is a politics issue which although you wouldn't generally relate to music, mostly rap, it in fact connects very well as before rap artists were objectifying woman and talking about materialistic items they were also talking about issues they face that rotates around the government and their policies which some rap and musician artists still do now.
They have used  Obama seeing as this was published during the elections, followed with the main headline as "Obama hip hop stand up" we would link this to some sort of racial comment as he was the first black president in Americas history, considering Americas history it must have been a very emotional and overwhelming time for the american people but in particular the black citizens due to there history and how far they come. This is a good use as it targets there audience, who are lower class black minorities in american who are patriotic and also listen to rap as it connects with them and makes them think anything is possible.
Although the magazine uses mainstream artists it also uses upcoming artists or artists trying to redeem there fame.
The lay out is quite cluttered, almost confused and misunderstood just as rap would be to anyone trying to express there feelings or to those who have never encountered rap.
Even though my music genre choice isn't rap or r&b, it's the closest genre that share the same aspects because they all originate from the same root and relate to each other very well. In addition my genre is a niche market as there are no magazines out there that concentrate specifically on neither afrobeats nor bashment.

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