Our media product uses conventions from real R&B magazines to develop our own magazine for a target audience of females aged 17-25. We analyzed magazines like Vibe to inform our layout, fonts, images and writing style. While following conventions, we also challenged stereotypes by including more emotive photos of artists smiling and laughing. Our goal was to provide a magazine for women that discusses both female and male artists.

1. Evaluation Lauren Walter Charlotte Ellis

2. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? We have used conventions of real media products in order to help us develop our own products in a similar way. Our magazine is very similar to traditional R’n’B magazines as a result. We completed a range of radio analysis on existing R&B magazines, one being Vibe Magazine, we compared font, text, size, use of colour and the style of the writing, and images - body language, which images were best suited to which page - full length photos used for double page spread and top half image for front cover. We also studied things like Mise-En-Scene and took account of what was in the background of the image as that can also tell a story. So therefore this helped us develop on our ideas by choosing whether to have a plain background or a specific setting. On the image we also took account of facial expressions and found that in some professional pictures of R&B artists they do not seem to show much emotions like smiling etc they normally just have a certain pose, so in some images we challenged this by having pictures show more emotions like laughing and smiling. There was a common trend occurring in most magazines we edited and analysed, we used this idea in our own development. We used the magazines as a guideline for our product, used similar layout. Included existing artists and added our own artists. We included our own ideas to improve the product and to give it our own affect.

3. In my product I used the conventions of media products by using puns like ‘the power of 3’ in my headline, also stating a line like “2011’s biggest R&B magazine” you can usually find something like that in a magazine. I developed on the title as we thought it was very unusual and not many like it, as the title is usually plain and just the word by itself however on our title each letter had a black background to make it stand out. This was also a development from our preliminary as the title on that was also very plain. I also based my image on what I have seen in magazines previously to give it the same kind of look. I used a close up showing just the top half of my artist and overlapping it with the title. A barcode was also used on my front cover which you can usually find on a magazine. I also used the convention of placing somewhere on the magazine that the readers have an opportunity to win tickets to a certain concert or something like that. For my product I used conventional media products to create a similar design/layout. We traced certain aspects of magazines we analysed and created them like our own “2011’s biggest R&B magazine, you normally would find this on a front cover, including issue number and date. I used other conventional items like barcode and multiple sub-articles which cover all aspects of the magazine. To make my front cover stand out, I used bold bright colours, to attract the reader I added a large image, this represents the type of artists you might find in the magazine suited to my genre. To make my title stand out I used different sized font’s to make the writing stand out to pull the reader in. The added chance to win tickets which I included, I have seen on magazines before, this is a good way of grabbing the readers attention.

4. On my contents page I stuck to the original conventions of a media product on how to lay it out. The lay out is very original and basic to find out the pages of the magazine. We used the same font for the title of the contents page to the one we used on the front cover. This is to show the link between the two as I think it is good to show fluency through the magazine. I used one main image on the contents page which is of the same artist from the front cover this is normally what you find in a magazine as it draws you to the actual story on both pages. However I also placed a couple of other pictures which is also a convention as a contents page normally has a couple of small pictures on the page to give you an insight on what else you can find in the magazine. I have also developed on adding more detail into my contents page, which is an improvement from my preliminary task of creating a contents page as that didn’t use any conventions as it was quite bland and boring. For the layout of my contents page I stuck to conventional plans/products, I used existing ideas to improve mine and to develop in a similar way. The layout I have created is basic, I have made use of space with lots of information and images. The font for my contents page is the same as the one I used for my front cover I thought this would be good to show a link from page to page, to allow the pages to flow continuously. I used one main image for my contents page, this is the link to the images I used for my double page spread. My smaller image consisted of my artist I used on the front- this is representing the main story. I used a smaller black/white image which contrasts with my background and font, this is to present different effects which i used when creating my magazine, i also added an effect to my main image to make her stand out. An overall improvement from the preliminary task, i learnt to use Photoshop better and improved by adding more font/colour and improving the picture effects.

5. I based my double page spread very much on what I have seen before in previous R&B magazines. I have put a quote on top of the picture which you usually see on a magazine. I also developed my skills of writing by creating an interview for the double page spread which is often used to find out more on the artist. I also stuck to the same colours through out my magazine. Using the colours black white and yellow. The main layout for my double page spread is similar to conventional layouts i have seen from product analysis. But i have added my own effect to make it a stand out product, this is different from what you would normally see. I have added the conventional “rule of 3” for my main article title, adding quotes to make it more interesting. I developed my skills of writing when creating this page as I had to come up with my own interview ideas, but stick to the topic at the same time, the aim of the article is to find out about the artist. I used one main image using a whole side of the page, this image is in black and white as I think if I had used a colour image this would have been too much. I have used bright colouring for the font to make the page stand out.

6. How does your media product represent particular social groups? Our media product represents multiple social groups, we based our magazine on a specific age and gender group. Our main target audience is females and our target group is between the ages of 17-25. This formed the basis of our media product. We used this as a guideline for what to include, what our magazine should be about. We made sure our product was formed around this, this helped when developing our product. We used our target audience and created double page spreads focused on females. The representation of females is shown through our images and text, they are based on stereotypical females that we have researched. We took into consideration mise-en-scene when planning and creating our magazine. We included all factors, when planning we choose specific four/five main colours to use in our product, we used these colours for font- both main title and individual page titles, including texts and backgrounds. We used typical R’n’B language for our magazine, this consisted of existing artist names and nicknames ‘street language’. For camera work we used main half-shot images for the front cover, this was to show a main focus, to attract our target audience attention. We used editing for some photos, to create effects on the background or which we thought benefited the image or allowed them to stand out.

7. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why? The institution would be a small independent company, I think this would be most suited as our magazine does not suit everyone, we have a specific target audience, in this case women aged between 17-25. There is only a certain number of the population that would buy it, would not be a successful multi national as would not make as much money as if it were suited to all ages. There is an ideological purpose for this magazine, during our research we found that conventional R&B magazines were more male-focused, we wanted to provide a similar magazine but aimed at women. This will bring in a wider target audience, there are already similar magazines designed for men we just made them more female friendly. Any small company, could already produce magazine of the same genre or an ordinary company looking to sell a wider range of magazines. Our magazine is one which you would not normally see, we included female artists for the main stories and added extra details suited for them.

8. Who would be the audience for your media product? We have chosen to base our media product on females, we analysed existing products and edited our magazine around this. We chose a specific age range of 17-25. Here we have applied Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs by aiming our product at a specific target audience, here we are applying affiliation- the need to belong to a group. We got the idea from Graham Burton’s Social grouping theory, using this theory helped us to decide what to base our product on and what ways to plan and edit it to suit this. We socially grouped our magazine in terms of age and gender. We used Richard Dyer’s Utopian solution to motivate and engage our target audience, offering them the ‘solutions of energy’ through the use of editing (colour and images) and ‘community’ by including topical information- providing the reader with topics of conversation- therefore creating a media group. Through using these theories we have been able to improve our product to suit our target audience in a wide range of ways. This has helped to make our product interesting and fun.

9. How did you attract/address your audience? We attracted our audience by applying certain headlines that would more likely appeal to females. For example articles on finding out gossip on male artists or the latest charts. We appealed to our target audience by using female artists as the main story of both magazines. We used colour schemes which included girly colours (bright luminous colours), and included things we thought would more likely attract a female audience. Also by having a male artist on the front cover, it would more likely address to females as its what a large majority of females look for on a cover, something that would catch their eye. The colours used we thought would also attract females as males seem to be more interested in bland colours, where as we used colours like bright yellow, bright pink and bright blue, which we think would attract to females. We also conducted an interview to collect detailed information on what would appeal to our audience. For example we asked what would appeal most to the audience, and the feedback was that the majority think the front cover appeals to them most and what is on it like the headlines and what grabs their attention so we made sure our headlines were what we thought eye catching We also found from the questionnaire that females were more likely to purchase the magazine if there was a male artist on the front of the magazine. So therefore to attract to our audience we had a male artist as the main image on our front cover.

10. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product? By completing this product we have learnt about a variation of different technologies constructing this product. Firstly we improved our PowerPoint skills as from this task we learnt to keep to a specific colour scheme and border we also discovered that the presentations would look a lot better and professional by not using certain things like ClipArt and WordArt. Throughout the process we also adapted on how to edit the images we used on Photoshop for example we learnt how to cut the image out so the background was erased and we could add our own background. When making the product we learnt how to develop the product by creating different layers to move everything around and we also learnt how to order them in the process so we could make the page look more detailed by making things over lap.

11. Looking back at your preliminary, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product? Making our preliminary product definitely helped with our progression of the final products. Before completing the preliminary task neither of us had used Photoshop before so therefore didn’t really know how to use it, so by completing a preliminary task it enabled us to experiment with the editing programmes before going on to completing our final product giving us a rough idea of what is on there and how you use it and how to edit pictures and text, making us more aware of how to use them. To begin with we was looking at using Macromedia Fireworks, which seemed to be just as complicated as Photoshop but we was then advised to use Photoshop as it was more professional. Using Photoshop in our preliminary definitely helped us when producing our final product So as a result of this after completing the preliminary and before starting our final product we had a rough idea of how to use the programme and what to expect when trying to edit our final product. Our main strength was the improvement between our preliminary task and our main products, as you can see the amount of detail that has changed between the two and the styling to make it more eye catching and worth reading.

12. One main difference between our preliminary task and our final product is that we have learnt to blend everything together a bit better, as in our preliminary everything seems to just be on top of each other and you can see all the layers, where as in our final products we have layered it well and looks better as a whole instead of individual parts of the magazine. There is also overall more detail on the product which would pull the reader in more as they can find out more.

13. I think the difference between our preliminary task for the contents page and our final contents page is a big improvement. It all together looks a lot more eye catching as there is a range of colours not just one main colour, the colours also contrast in our final product so they stand out in places, like the caption under the main image and the black writing stands out from the white background where as in the preliminary task we used black writing and a dark green background so it doesn’t stand out as much, looking back now I think we would of benefited from having all the writing white to make it more eye catching. There are also more images on our final product so it automatically looks like there is more to offer.