The document discusses conventions of the R&B music genre including serious facial expressions and dark clothing for men, and revealing clothing for women. To research the genre, the author looked at magazine covers to see typical styling. For their magazine cover, the author dressed the model in dark casual clothing and had them look confidently at the camera. The magazine uses conventions like pull quotes and images focusing on the upper body with a plain background.

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or
challenge forms and conventions of real media product.
Genre research- my genre I chose was r&b the type of conventions that were common through out
this genre is the styling of clothing they wear many of the men are dressed in casual designer brands
usually dark colours wear as the women are more sexualised and wear very revealing clothing. The
colour pallet used on many magazines consist of dark colours and red is often used. The facial
expressions tend to be more serious for the men compared to the women. Men are often represented
as physically strong and self-confident.
To research my genre I used google and looked at different magazine covers to see the way in which
the artists were dressed and what colours were used on the covers.
To try and make my magazine look similar to a real one, I made the models dress in dark casual
clothing and in most of the pictures I made him look at the camera to come across as confident and
engage with reader.
In terms of content and layout, I used many typical magazine conventions to engage the reader. I've
used things such as pull quotes and strap lines to hopefully engage the reader I also used a mid-shot
image to mainly focus on the upper body of the image and for the background I just used a plain
brick wall to make the setting look more urban for my genre of magazine.
Male artist shown as serious and strong
looking into the camera connecting
with audience.
Women come across as sexy
usually always wear revealing
clothes

2. How does your media product
represent particular social groups
• On my front cover and double page spread I tried to represent my artist as what
would be typically seen in the genre of music I chose. I tried to take the pictures so
they are not just focusing on the artist face by the clothing and hand gestures.
I made my model dress in dark clothing as that it
what seemed to be a common occurrence for the
genre I chose. I also chose a black model which
could be seen as stereotypical as the r&b music
industry does have many black artists compared to
other races . I was trying to portray my artist as
either an English drake or Big Sean.

3. What kind of intuition might distribute
your media product and why.
Bauer media might distribute my magazine as they are one of
the largest privately owned companies, they 107 brands radio,
digital,magazines and tv. I chose them to publish my magazine as
they have many personal relationships engaged readers they
also already offer 300 magazines in 15 countries and publish
over 217 million magazines a year.
I think Bauer media will also be a good institution to publish my
magazine as they don’t publish lots of r&b magazines meaning
there wont be as much competition and they can target a new
section of the audience.
http://www.bauermedia.co.uk/brands
I went on the Bauer
media website and the
section to with brands
to find out what they
publish.

4. Who would be the audience for your
media product?
The audience for my media product would be firstly for people
who are interested in r&b music magazines and that genre of
music. I think the type of person who would enjoy my magazine
is teenagers and possibly young adults.
I asked a range of people what type of magazines they liked and
how much they were willing to pay for a music magazine.
These are the questions which I asked
my audience.
I then filmed them
answering my questions
to find out what they
thought and put it on my
blog.

5. How did you attract/address your
audience
From my audience research I found that mostly it was the front cover that
people were interested in when buying a magazine, so I tried to make my
front cover appealing to the audience I included bright colours and a pull
quote to draw the reader in.
According to Blumler and Katz, readers might use magazines to develop their
personal identity my magazine offers the readers as a role model as he
started off as just an average boy making YouTube videos and became known
through the use of social media. This also difference compared to other R&B
magazines as most of the people on their covers are well known celebrities
and were often well known before they started producing music.

6. What have you learnt about
technologies from the process of
constructing the product
For my magazine I had to use many different technologies
including Indesign and Photoshop to be able to get images onto
my magazine cover. I had many difficulties when trying to put a
picture on as it either came out as too dark or really pixelated.
If I was to do my magazine differently next time I would make
sure I had a range of images so I could find one that fitted
perfectly on the front cover.
On in-design I have learnt how to place a picture and be able to
also add writing over the top to make a magazine. I also learnt
how to edit writing and add colours to text.

7. Looking back at your preliminary task what do
you feel you have learnt in the progression from
it to the final product.
I learnt how to use in design as that is what I
used to make the magazine I also learnt how to
use Photoshop to edit images to make them
appropriate for the magazine. When I first
started I didn’t know how to use Photoshop I had
to learn through the help of other people and
the teacher.
I did find it hard to use Photoshop as not all my
images were against a plain background so it
was hard to be able to crop the whole image.