Hannah Cooke

I obeyed the rule of the left third as I placed all of the cover lines on the left hand side of the page so that when they are on the shelf you should still see them.

I used a consistent house style and colour scheme throughout all three of my pages to make it look as though the pages could be part of a real R&B magazine. The house style is conventional as the bold fonts are what would be seen in an actual R&B magazine.

I placed the masthead at the top of the page so that it is conventional to most other magazines who place their magazine names at the top of the cover.

The dateline and the website are conventional to other magazines as all magazines have a dateline and most have their own websites for fans. They are kept quite small as they aren’t the first things a reader would be drawn to.

The cover lines are mostly kept quit short and snappy for readers to get a taste of what stories and topics the magazine will include. The cover lines use conventional language such as ‘exclusive’.

The fact it says ‘New! First Edition’ in a stereotypical style box shows that this is the pilot copy of this magazine and will make readers want to read it as it is a new magazine and the first edition.

The main image is wearing clothes that you would expect someone in an R&B magazine to wear, not too casual but not too over-dressed. Like most other magazines this is the biggest image on the page and is the dominant contrast. The prop used is unconventional but it is supposed to be relevant to the singer’s song ‘Umbrella’. The pink colour scheme is continued in this image. Also the same person is used on each of the images used within my pages to keep it consistent.

The price is made clear on the front cover so readers can see it easily. From my research I found that my target audience would usually pay about this price for a music magazine.

I broke the convention of using the Gutenberg diagram but my image looked better with her eyes looking upwards rather than downwards towards the bottom of the page.

The pink, black and white colour scheme is continued to keep consistency. I used the colour pink as my magazine is probably aimed more at girls than boys.

The font used is consistent to those of the other 2 pages I have page. It is kept black and bold to make it stand out as clear as possible to the audience.

The main image is once again the dominant contrast and the biggest object on the page to draw attention to the fact that the main article in the magazine is about her. The brightly coloured jewellery attracts our eyes to the image. The pose she is doing is also quite different to a normal picture and makes the reader look at the image more.

The black and white background adds to the house style and colour consistency as it is a black and white pattern.

In this contents column it is split into three sections using pink diving lines. The cover story has it’s own section to emphasise it. Each heading is made bigger than the rest of the text and is made bolder so we can tell clearly they are headings.The page numbers are set neatly in a separate column so you can see them easily. The bright hot pink colour is eye catching.

The article is split into 3 columns all of equal width to create balance within the spread. The text is kept in a simple black easy-to-read font so that the audience can read it easily.

These two images are quite unconventional images as they use bold borders. The images contain other people in the frames to try and give a sense of realism.

The star stamps are unconventional to what you would usually find in a magazine but fill out the page and give more balance to it. They also look nice and decorative. The fact star shapes are used has connotations of famous celebrity stars.

The image is positioned in a way where she sits in the corner of the page, this is quite different to other double spread’s but I thought it was quite effective.

The font used is the same bold black one used on the other pages to keep it consistant.

The pull quotes are highlighted in pink with a black drop shadow to make them stand out, you can recognize them as pull-quotes due to the quotation marks. I tried to use quotes that would intrigue the audience for example references to death.

This text is made in bold as it is a short summary of what the article will be about and it should make the audience want to read more and read the article itself.

This gives information about the artist’s tour and also tries to encourage the audience to visit the magazine’s website.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

My magazine represents young people, mostly teenagers from different social groups as R&B is popular with a lot of young people these days. It is one of the most popular genres and features the most popular artists. It is representative of teenage girls mainly as the colour scheme uses a lot of pinks which is a stereotypical colour that we associate with females.

The costume used by the model is bright and colourful which represents youths as being fun and upbeat characters. The model isn’t over dressed in any of the images, but isn’t left looking casual. She is dressed according to a fashion that the target audience would wear which includes clothes from stores such as ‘Topshop’. Lots of jewellery is used as young people like to accessorize. The way the model is stood in each image portrays young people and also in the main three images the model doesn’t make eye contact with the camera which could suggest that young people can be quite ignorant but overall I think the images convey a positive image of young people, and paint a bright colour picture of what they are like today.

The whole product is quite busy but kept quite simple which could be a connotation of young people’s lives, busy but simple and enjoyable.

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

I think that the distributers of Vibe magazine would be most likely to distribute my media product as both my magazine pages and Vibe magazine have a similar target audience and are both concentrate on a more R&B genre of artists and music. They could mention my media product in Vibe magazine to promote it as it will appeal to the same audience as Vibe. My magazine would benefit from being distributed by a company that already has experience in working with the same style of magazine. The company would know existing contacts and could help to improve my media product. There would be an established audience already made which would be the audience of Vibe magazine.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

The audience for my media product would probably be young teenagers aged 13-21 that are interested in R&B music. The secondary audience would probably be other young people that are interested in the topics involved in the magazine or the genre of music or older people that will buy the magazine for their children.I created a questionnaire and handed it out to teenagers within my target age range and viewed the results to help me with my final decisions on my media product. I made my article a gossip one as that was the preferred type and the magazine would also be weekly as that is how often most young people would purchase a music magazine. Most people claimed that they would normally pay between £1-£2 for a music magazine so I just used the middle price of £1.50 for my magazine to ensure it was a reasonable price for my target audience.Most girls that filled in the questionnaire preferred the image of a front cover with a female image on it, most males preferred the image with the male on it but as my magazine had a pink and more feminine colour scheme and is probably more targeted at females than males as more females tend to buy magazines, I used a female model.

How did you attract/address your audience?

I think the overall image of my magazine would firstly attract the audience as the colours used are bright and eye-catching on each page. The bold black fonts and the large dominant images would jump out of the stand at the reader, I tried to make the cover lines stand out more by giving them a drop shadow to give them a bit more emphasis. It is all kept quite simple and the fonts are easy-to-read and therefore all ‘easy on the eye’ the images aren’t too outstanding and in your face but the colours make them stand out on the page. The fact my product uses quite a lot of images would appeal to the target audience as they usually prefer to look at pictures and reader shorter bits of information rather than read the full article. I used a well-known R&B star, Rihanna, so that audiences could identify with the singer and her story would appeal to them more. Young teenage girls would be able to identify with the model used due to her fashion sense such as the model wears ‘Jeggings’ which is a popular trend with young girls today.

Language is used mainly on the contents page that young people could identify with as it is more slang such as ‘hottest R&B albums’ the language would also make the audience feel as though they needed to keep up to date with the latest trends and gossip in the world of R&B to keep their image and style updated. The typefaces used are very plain simple texts for the larger pieces of texts so it is easy to read. The mast head uses a consistent bold font that I found that I immediately associated with an R&B genre as it is thick and black and bold and just fits the stereotypical idea.

The layout is quite busy but young people like busy, their whole lives are busy. They like having lots of little pieces of information and lots of pictures to look at throughout the magazine.

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

I have learnt how to use modern technologies such as photoshop to edit my images and improve them. For example getting rid of red eyes in my photographs and adjusting the brightness effectively. I have learnt how to use digital cameras and take better framed shots.

This is an example of me using the red eye tool I learnt to use on photoshop to make an image look better:

I edited all my images to make them brighter and look more professional and effective. I got rid of all red eyes and blemishes to make it look better.

This is an example of me editing the brightness of a picture on photoshop:

Looking back at your preliminary task what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

I feel that I learnt a lot between creating my preliminary task and my final media product. I developed my skills on Photoshop therefore my final pieces looked more professional and balanced. I learnt how to cut images out neater and more carefully simply through practice. I was more confident in making my final product as I had had practice and knew what i would want to do different for example make it more realistic and also to fill out the pages more. I also learnt what conventions worked well such as keeping the main image large and using a bright colour in the colour scheme that will stand out and catch the readers eye.