The document summarizes the student's evaluation of their coursework creating a magazine. It discusses conventions used in the front cover, contents page, and double page spread in comparison to real magazines. It also discusses how the magazine represents its target audience of young males interested in R&B music through colors, images, and language choices. The student chose MusicMags as the publishing company feeling it was more reliable than the alternative, TimeInc, which had previously shut down an R&B magazine.

1. Evaluating My Coursework Liam Pryor

2. Conventions of Front Cover Below is a picture of the front cover of ‘NME’ magazine and an image of the front cover I created. I have chosen to compare my magazine on this occasion to ‘NME’ because it’s a conventional magazine. Both of these magazines have their masthead in the top left hand corner of the page, along with a banner running across the top. Therefore this part of my front cover is conventional. One thing on my front cover that is slightly unconventional is the triangular shaped pug in the top right hand corner of the page. Some magazines do use this technique, but not many don’t so therefore its rather unconventional. Nevertheless, I still think that it is a professional technique to use and it makes the page look aesthetically pleasing.

3. Conventions of Contents Page The image to the left is the contents page that I created myself for my own magazine, and the one to the right is what a typical contents page looks like from ‘Q’ magazine. The writing down the left hand side of my contents page is conventional to that of ‘Q’ magazine and it also has subheadings similar to it also. My contents page is similar again to that of ‘Q’ in the way that it has a dominant picture in the top right hand corner of the page with the information surrounding the image. They both also have a banner across the top showing the date of the magazine which shows I followed the conventions for my contents page.

4. Conventions of Double Page Spread To the left is the double page spreads from my music magazine and one from another. My spread looks unconventional in the way that it has no where near as much colour as the one that I’m comparing it to. Having a big image of the artist relates in both spreads, however I think that their image is a little unconventional, as its just a picture of several people sitting down in a living room. Two things that I have used that are definitely conventional in a lot of music magazines are the use of a interview and a pull quote from the interview. I think that the pull quote makes the spread look more professional and in with conventions.

5. How My Media Products Represents Particular Social Groups Firstly the type of genre I have used for my music magazine is R&B music. This genre only represents a small section of music fans, but their are still many people who love this kind of music. In my opinion its mainly young people from their early teens up to when their in their late twenties who like this genre of music. Singers who belong in this type of music is superstars like Rihanna, Usher, Chris Brown and many more. I also think that it is a popular genre of music and that is part of my reason for choosing this for my music magazine project. The next thing I am going to discuss in the terms of representation is the images that I have used. On my front cover, contents page and double page spread, I have used pictures of a women to possibly try and attract the attention of the males in my target audience towards my magazine. This is a house style which I have used throughout the magazine and I think it follows conventions and attracts young males to it.

6. The colours used with my media products are really aimed at males as throughout my colour pattern is blue, black and grey. I did research into these colours and I found out that many people liked these colours and they thought they went well together. The fonts are also quite eroded and less feminine than other fonts that are available and along with the font, colours and choice of model to go in my magazine, I have tried to target as many males as I can to grab their attention towards my R&B magazine. The splash that I have used on the front cover is also very important to who the magazine represents. I used the headline ‘Rachel’s Debut Single Hits #1’ which is more for the attention of people who are up to date with the latest music, which is most likely to be the younger generation and slightly older. How My Media Products Represents Particular Social Groups

7. Institutions For the publishing of my magazine I have chosen to research the two publishing companies which I think are most suited for my magazine and who would be able to do best for my magazine (‘TMA’) in the long run. The two publishing companies I’ve decided on are TimeInc. and MusicMags. Both of these companies have a lot of experience and knowledge in publishing magazines and I would be confident to put my magazine sales into the arms of any of these publishers. The fact that there are hardly any R&B magazines in the market at this moment in time can only be good for the predicted sales of my magazine as R&B music fans are likely to be interested in my magazine.

8. Institutions Final Decision My final decision is to go ahead with the decision to choose MusicMags as my magazine publisher. I have chosen this because simply it has more promise and more experience in what I want to achieve with my magazine. TimeInc published the magazine ‘Vibe’ which gave me inspiration with my project as this is a R&B magazine too. However this magazine collapsed and stopped sales in 2009. Therefore for this reason along with others, I believe MusicMags is a more reliable publisher for me to use. MusicMags is a magazine distribution company for music instrument retailers with inherent added value that positively affects a retailer’s bottom line. They generate an average of 3.5 times the average revenue than the average distributor, MusicMags exclusively supplies a selection of over 48 leading magazines. Time Inc., a Time Warner company, is one of the largest content companies in the world. With a portfolio of 22 U.S. magazines and more than 25 U.S. Web sites, including some of the world's most popular, powerful and trusted brands, it is the largest magazine publisher in the U.S., and a leading publisher in the U.K. and Mexico. TimeInc were apart of the R&B magazine ‘Vibe’ but it was announced that it was shutting its doors in June 2009.

9. Audience The audience to magazine is very important as this has to go into account when creating the magazine. For instance when magazines use colours and fonts, it is long thought out before it goes onto the page as it has to stand out to the audience the magazine is intended for. Magazines like ‘NME’ and ‘Q’ look so different to each other because they simply have different target audiences and they try to make it eye-catching for the people they represent. ‘Q’ uses dark colours along with red as shown to the left which in some cases could be portrayed as violence and anger which goes with the genre of rock. This magazine only appeals to a niche audience as the majority of music fans do not like rock music. This will limit the amount of magazines that they can realistically sell, along with obviously minimizing profits.

10. Audience The audience for my magazine will of course be to people with an interest of R&B. This makes my audience niche, rather than a mass audience. I think that the colours i have used symbolize R&B well and that it would do well in the aim of achieving sales to its target audience. I used the magazine name of ‘TMA’ which stands for The Music Archive to be conventional as many other magazines have just short names such as ‘Vibe’, and some magazines use the initials of words as their masthead to shorten the name and make it look more professional. Magazines that do so are ‘NME’ and ‘Q’, both very big music magazines.

11. Attracting The Audience To attract my target audience, which is young males, I have used many different techniques in which will hopefully catch their eye. On my front cover, contents page and double page spread, I have used pictures of a women to maybe try and draw the attention of the males in my target audience towards my magazine. I have also used masculine colours to try and attract the eyes of males towards my front cover and intrigue them to want to see what's inside. The language I have used isn’t really aimed at anyone in particular as I have just used formal language. I decided against slang/informal language because some of my audience may not understand it and I am therefore minimizing my audience.

12. Attracting The Audience Another way I tried to draw people towards my magazine was through the use of subheadings and pugs. I have also used a border which states ‘ Britain's Biggest Monthly Music Magazine’ which makes the reader think that it’s a professional and interesting magazine. Subheadings on my front cover show the audience who and what is inside the magazine and it should hopefully want to make the person who sees it to want to see inside. I’ve used the names of big celebrities to make the reader feel intrigued. The use of the pug in the top right hand corner of the page says ‘R&B Top 10’ which will hopefully attract even more people towards the magazine.

13. Use Of Technology From studying media studies and being part of this project, I have been able to learn new skills and how to use different types of technology and programmes. All of my media products were made from macromedia fireworks. I had not used this programme before and I am now able to complete work using fireworks to a high standard. On fireworks I leant how to blend images together effectively and how to give images effects to make them look more professional. This is shown to the right in a screenshot. I also learnt to layer images over other images to get a professional look for my magazine. E.g. having the masthead in front or behind the model (main image).

14. Use Of Technology I also used a website called Dafont.com which gave me free fonts to use on my products. After I had chosen my wanted fonts however, I had to learn how to install the new fonts to work with programmes such as Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Macromedia Fireworks. To install a font you need to go to the Dafont website and choose a font you wish to download. Simply click download on the right hand side of the font and save it to your desktop. On your desktop you need to right click then extract all. Then to finish it off go to control panel > Fonts > File > Install new font and then find the font on your desktop via a dropdown menu and un tick the ‘copy fonts to fonts folder’ and left click install. I had never done any work with installing fonts before and it is very useful when creating media projects.

15. Use Of Technology The media project also helped me gain new skills with the programmes Microsoft word and Microsoft PowerPoint. Of course I had used both of these pieces of software before but my knowledge of the two became much better from using them in media studies lessons. I learnt how to use slide designs in PowerPoint because I needed to do well presentable research with it and I also learned how to use a master slide efficiently. In Microsoft Word i learnt how to use page setup efficiently to lay your work out well. Two websites that helped enormously with my media studies coursework were Blogger.com and Slideshare.net. Blogger is a site that allows you to create a personal blog which you can update and publish files to whenever you want to. This was a great website to use as you could complete and publish coursework anywhere you had access to the internet. Slideshare is a website that allows you to publish PowerPoint presentations onto your blog so you could do your coursework on presentations too . I learned how to use all of these pieces of technology efficiently through the classes of media studies and they are a great help with all the work I do.

16. Progress From Prelim I think that my progress from my preliminary task up to my final product here is massive. As you can see the two magazine front covers are miles apart in class and I have improved significantly in making media products. I have become a lot better at using technology which as helped a lot in the making of my final front cover. My Macromedia Fireworks skills used in my preliminary front cover were quite honestly terrible and I have improved greatly in that area. I have also learnt how to make a conventional magazine. By this I mean that my preliminary task has no signs of magazine conventions and simply does no look like a professional magazine. Whereas in my final piece I have used a border, sub-headings, a barcode and more that make it look conventional and like it should be in a shop being sold. I have learnt how to use conventions very well.

17. Progress From Prelim My contents page prelim is without a doubt very poor. I have only used one story with page numbers on the page and it is simply not like what a contents page should be like. However, my final contents page is a improvement on a big scale compared to the prelim. It has an image that doesn’t fill the whole page so that there is enough room for the information about what’s in the rest of the magazine. It has different sub-menus that follows conventions of other magazines and it follows the magazine house style by using the same fonts and colours throughout. The model used on my final pieces are used intentionally to target a male audience. Colours are also used for this effect and it looks in my opinion like a professional contents page.