Music Magazine – The Evaluation By Adwoa Agyei

Forms and Conventions In what ways does your magazine use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real music magazines? For this part of the evaluation I placed my magazine against the VIBE magazine I had brought for the analysis of front covers, DPS and contents page. Doing this helped me check if I had used the same forms and conventions of a real music magazine. Staring with my front cover I have placed the masthead on the top where they are normally placed and feature articles on the left along with the barcode and display date. I have also added features articles on the bottom right. So this is very similar to a normal music magazine the only difference is that I have added the Turnt Up logo and for an R&B magazine it is very bright. The shot on the front cover is a medium shot which most front coves consist of. The DPS doesn't follow the forms and conventions of a real music magazine. The DPS normally placed in a music magazine are used for advertisement but with my magazine I have added an interview which is to be continued on another page within the magazine. My DPS model doesn't relate to the front cover as the magazines i had previously read didn't show any sign of relation, they had been on the front cover and then on the contents page, so I did the same. On a DPS 60% of the page is writing and the other 40% is the picture or half and half. I took this into account and did 50% writing and 50% pictures. I placed a picture on both sides and placed writing on top. The contents also follows some aspects of forms and convention. The picture on the other hand doesn't because it is a medium close up shot. I have kept the consistency of adding the logo and the website address t the bottom of every page. The contents page has a list of feature articles that the magazine will have inside the magazine but doesn't have and editors note or the name of the photographer and the name of the clothing the model is wearing. These haven't been added because my contents page will look cluttered.

Representational Issues How does your magazine represent particular social groups? The magazine I have created represents a black social group, mainly females as of now but this is something I would want to change this. For my front cover I have chosen a young black female, who's wearing up-to-date fashionable clothing. These talk connotatively as they already show that she is a young black female R&B artist they also show she's commercial because an R&B artist will be dressed in tight shorts and a tight top but it subverts this as she is fully clothed. The magazine its self subverts R&B because R&B models are usually male, but I have changed this and used a female.

Institutions What kind of institution might distribute your magazine and why? An institution is an established organisation that deals with the distribution of advertising, entertainment and information. My magazine will be sent to IPC Media who are UK’s leading consumer magazine. It will be sent to IPC because they are with 90 brands and sell over 350 million magazines a year, so already my magazine will get some sort of advertisement. When it then gets noticed a bit more I will go on to send my magazines to institutions such as WH Smith. WH Smith are a British retailer best known for selling books, magazines, newspapers and other entertainment products. Supermarkets such as Tesco who have recently started selling magazines in the store. And finally move onto shops abroad in America. This will help me maximise Turnt Up publicity.

Target Audience Who would be the target audience for your magazine? For the target audience of my R&B music magazine I would have to relate it back to ethnicity this would be black male or female aged 16 – early 20s. Hunky, quite muscular man if it was normal R&B but now more slim, medium built. Urban dwellers, working their way to the middle. But since my magazine is for commercial R&B it relates to a wider range of R&B audiences. The ethnicity is versatile but mainly black. The magazine would target an older audience if I had used an older or more mature looking model. But more younger people engage in magazines so its alright. The readers should be interested commercial R&B based stuff such as upcoming artist, new music, tour dates, a lot of stuff based in the music industry and new clothing. Teenagers that engage with their internet, interested in popular social networking sites like Facebook, twitter, with a great interest in music. They may also like a lot of the hot artist out right now like Keri Hilson, Chris Brown, Trey Songz, Justin Biber and Rihanna. As a teenager that likes a lot of commercial R&B music i have put across my ideas that will attract the audience.

Addressing the readership How did you attract / address your audience? when making the magazine I instantly new that I would have to use black people for the magazine because the commercial R&B audience is more dominated with black people. So I took this into account and used a black female as my front cover and contents page model. Doing this helped me address and attract my audience. I then decided to go out of the colour and chose a Vietnamese male for my double page spread. I also made and online poll that you can access by clicking on this URL within the questionnaire it consisted of important questions such as what type of information are you looking for in an r&b magazine. What colours they would like and if they would like to hear about music updates in the magazine. This helped me because I took all of this into account and made some articles about music updates, interviews, upcoming tours and more. I attracted them by using some of the colours they had asked me to use in the questionnaire, and as mentioned before feature articles they would want.

Technical/Construction Issues What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing your magazine? (software, photography etc) I've learnt a lot about technologies from the process of constructing my first magazine. If you want your magazine to look professional you may have to invest in Photoshop as that's what the professional use to construct their magazine or fix their photography. when I first made the school magazine I didn't have access to Photoshop but now making the music magazine I decided to download the trail version of Photoshop cs4 this is the latest version of Photoshop. this helped me make the affects to the masthead and the logo of the cassette and iPod and changing them to red but still maintaining the shiny effect. Using Photoshop was hard as I have never used it before, but as I spent time with it and fiddled around I had gotten used to it. Photography was a challenge in both task but harder in the main task as some of my models were unreliable with the time I had set to take pictures of them. At the end I got my pictures. I first used a 12 megapixel camera for my photos but it wasn't as good as the 14 megapixel camera my friend had so I browed hers.

Comparisons between prelim and main tasks Looking back to your school magazine cover, what do you feel you have learnt between creating that and creating your music magazine? How did the school magazine task help The school magazine helped in some ways because similar to the music magazine you have a target audience that you have to relate to and you have to find out how you are going to target them. Not only targeting them but making feature articles that will grab hold of their attention immediately and draw them into the magazine. To help me do this in both tasks I used a questionnaire with relevant questions and with my music magazine I created an online poll that I distributed to others. They gave useful answers to what they expect in a magazine and this helped me to produce mine. My photography skills have improved and when you have a particular target audience it makes it easier for you to choose the type of model you want. When making the school magazine I knew I wanted to use six formers but I didn't no who, so it took me a while to come up with something but I eventually did. Now when making my R&B music magazine I thought about who I wanted to use and how I wanted to dress, so I planned a head. my constructions skills have improved a lot. In the school magazine I used publisher to make it, But for my actual music magazine I have used a more advanced software Photoshop CS4 that I got from the adobe website as a trail. During construction of the school magazine working with a active background was very hard so I had to place some white bits in their to make it look simple when I apply the font and feature articles. So with my music magazine I decided to use a plain background so it will be easier to work with. Over all the preliminary task has helped a lot because it has helped me learn from my mistakes.