The typography of the masthead located at the top of the cover is big and bold, which is used as it can be easily recognised aswell as being a key focal point, the magazines masthead is what differentiates ”The Source” from any other hip-hop magazine and is therefore crucial in being clearly distinguishable. The “the” in the masthead is written vertically and this links in with graffiti culture and also hip-hop. The colour of the masthead is grey and this is similar to the colour of the gun and the smokey visual effect. Grey connotes danger and mystery. Therefore it is associated with urban street culture, which hip-hop music is heavily dependent on. The colours blue and yellow are used as they compliment each other and are bright and attractive, they also are used as they stand-out from the black background.
The gun barrel is the key image and therefore is associated with the main headline. The image of the gun barrel is labelled by “.357 MAGNUM” and this makes it clearly identifiable as a weapon and could be used to draw attention. Also the magnum is known for being a powerful weapon. The visual smokey effect that is shown from the gun barrel, has many pictures of hip-hop artists embedded into it. These hip-hop artists are shown to be associated with violence as the smokey effect ascends up behind the headline.
Many of the puffs and plugs are names of hip-hop artists and therefore associate them with the magazine, it also is a very common convention in magazines as the readers get an insight of the content as well as promoting their name. The diverse range of hip-hop artists widens the target audience as fans of the genre can recognise their favourite artists. One of the banner headlines at the top of the magazine is of sport, the NBA in particular which is a popular sport amongst hip-hop culture, this use of intertextuality is common as it increases the target audience by associating sport with hip-hop.
