Analysis of vibe magazine

This is a magazine which is currently aimed at a younger male target audience because the featured artists are Keri Hilson, Ashanti, 50 cent and Nelly many of these artists are listened to by a younger target audience. You would not associate people who read rock music with reading this magazine as this music is generally targeting people who are interested in r’n’b music as this magazine focus more narrowly on rap music, This is shown because of the r’n’b singer usher featured on the front page of this magazine wearing props of jewellery to show a gangster like personality. At the moment vibe currently has 800, 00 readers and it is £3, 99 per magazine. Vibe is a music and entertainment magazine founded by producer Quincy Jones. The magazine also devoted several pages to photo spreads displaying high-end designer clothing as well as sportswear by urban labels such as Roca wear and Fubu.Vibe made a consistent effort to feature models of all ethnicities in these pages The publication predominantly features R&B and hip-hop music artists, actors and other entertainers.Looking at the of the name of this magazine the colour theme is blue red and white, which red is quite a catchy colour for a title drawing immediate attention. Looking at the titles on this magazine cover you automatically see that the main focus is the model on this cover who is ushering with the added catchy title “usher the king is back” with his name printed next to the image. The usage of different colours shows that they are trying to use different predominant colours to attract the viewer to the most important parts of the cover for example the black font is very bold and eye-catching against a lighter background making it more visible to read in comparison to the white fonts. The font which is used in red on this magazine cover looks like the type of font which is usually used for graffiti by young youths.

This is then using ideology of black youths, as in they expect a Black youth to be dressed with a ‘hoody’ and expect them to be against the law in some way. Does the media therefore act as a source of encouragement creating an excuse for the Black community for the way they act and encouraging them by showing role models who encourage this gangster like behaviour? I also found in my research that this may be encouraged by this magazine through the definition of “swagger” this means ideally that it is shown from how the person handles a situation, the attitude they have, and that it can also be shown in the person's walk.