A1 Hip-Hop Magazine
A1 is a fictional hip-hop magazine, created to share the best of the best hip-hop music and culture, quarterly. The graphic style of the magazine was created to standout with in the space of music journalism. Attention was also paid to make the photography, as visually intriguing as possible. The A1 wordmark and placement was created to also to move away from the typical magazine design of having the name large and centered.
Table of contents
The table of contents page was created to be used across issues, leveraging the forms of the wordmark to create bold shapes that also influenced the grid of the page.
New-ish
New-ish is the first department of the magazine, created with the intent to showcase four up and coming artists from a different city each issue. This issue covers Chicago artists Famous Dex, Noname, Joey Purp, and Saba. Again the A1 wordmark was broken down into graphic elements and used between the spreads.
Visual Ventures
Visual Ventures is another department, focusing on visual artists that have worked with the artist in the featured article. This issue focuses on AWGE, a secretive collective of artists and creatives that work frequently with A$AP Rocky and his fellow A$AP Members. This issue focuses on AWGE Members; Dexter Navy, Robert Gallardo, and Ian Connor.
Flacko Tests
The feature article in this issue, examines A$AP Rocky and his newest album “Testing”. Along with his album release, Rocky also created a performance piece called, “Lab Rat”. In this performance, Rocky was placed in a glass cube and a voice asked him to perform various tests. “Testing” and its performance piece were selected for A1’s first feature article, because both really pushed the boundaries of hip-hop in a noteworthy way
bar breakers
The final department in A1 is Bar Breakers. This department was created with the idea of showcasing one song an issue that is very lyrically impressive. The song is then taken and the rhyme scheme is broken down and color coded.
