Orpington College Media Project: January 2009

The magazine that I produced was fairly easy I followed the conventions of Vibe magazine. The layout of my magazine follows the conventions of my magazine. The layout of my magazine is a basic layout. My masthead is at the top of my front cover page slanted, this is an unconventional feature of an RnB magazine, and I decided to use this feature to make my magazine look different and unique. I used a medium close up image of a female model; the image is quite a low angle image. The colour scheme of my magazine was based from vibe's past magazine I picked out bright colours of the vibe magazine because I wanted my magazine to look bright which is connotation of happiness. The contents page is very basic the top half of the page has a medium close up image which has been filtered on Photoshop with an orange light. My featured article is a quick questionnaire; this page promotes the artist album and has a little background information about the artist. The language of the article is simple for everyone to read as the theme of this issue was to be happy. I followed the conventions of an Rnb magazine. The article on my featured page is an interview of the well known artist Ashanti, the tone of the interview sounds very comfortable, and the artist had a lot to say about herself. I decided to ask two questions to make the featured article to make the audience read less; I want the4 target audience of my magazine to focus more on the images and to promote the albums better.
The layout of the featured article follows the conventions of other RnB magazines. The image of one side on the page is a long shot of the artist and another image which is a medium close up on the top right corner, this image links to the front cover of my magazine. The other side of my featured article is mainly focusing on the artist album.

The model I decided t6o use for my front cover was a female this was based from the answers that I got from the questionnaire. I also agreed with the audience because as my own opinion I think that females attract the public more due to the male gaze. The model of my front cover magazine was perfect she posed the way I wanted her to pose, the big grin and the tongue bar shown represent the theme of being happy but the tongue bare shows an different side to the magazine sort of an explicit side. The images on my featured article represents and links to the subheading "keeping it real" my model was dressed in a certain outfit to show how simple some celebrities can be I didn’t want her to dress in fancy dresses because she interview was kind of based from her background. I made the dress code quite simple to relate to the social groups. Most young people dress quite simple and casual so I decided to make my model dress simple and casual to link to the target audience and to show realism. The figure expression of my model shows happiness and joy, again this relates to the theme of this issue. My model was a black 24 year old girl. I decided to use a black girl for my magazine to follow the conventions of RnB magazines, most RnB magazines focuses on black artists. The artist talks about the who inspired her on her music career, this article can relate to the social group and represents, most young people life with inspirations. I chose to write a short interview and talk about the artist inspiration. The music article starts off with a big letter, this is conventional, the article immediately starts off with a quote this is unconventional as other RnB magazines don’t do this, but I made it different to attract my target audience, this feature links to my target audience as the article jumps straight to the point.
Vibe was the magazine company that I researched on; I would have distributed my magazine to a publisher. T he is a link to the vibe magazine media pack
http://www.vibe.com/magazine/retailer_info/2005/06/vibe_media_kit04.pdf.
The audience for my magazine will be young people aged group 17-29 middle class students or employees. This social group will have time to buy magazine and be occupied and also RnB music fans. Based from the vibe media pack ad brand values, it seems to be that most black youth tend to buy magazines such as mine to find out more on celebrities.
The colour scheme of my magazine attracts the audience as it is bright colours; the images have been filtered with different colours to show more effect the style of the magazine is simple quite straight forward for the audience to understand, the contents page of my magazine is very clear on where it each is, it indicates this clear, and the use of different colours on the text makes it clear on where to find certain pages. The fact that I used a female model which is good looking attracts the audience the majority would be men.
From what I have learnt form making and producing my magazine will be based on the amount of time it took to make. First I had to plan and research other RnB/ Hip-Hop magazines. I had to follow conventions so my magazine can look as perfect well known RnB magazine such as VIBE.
I used two software’s when constructing my magazine. I used Photoshop to manipulate my magazine images. On most f my magazine images I filtered my image. I cut out the background to add affect on images. First I duplicated each image that I was going to edit. The other software I used was In design, this software helped me lay out the page. I resized my images to fit the contents proportionately. I also used the internet for my research on my production on the magazine, this was another technology that I had to consider when producing my magazine, and this helped me follow the conventions of other RnB magazine such as king, vibe, and Hip-hop connection. Hip-hop and RnB is a great combination as it links in many ways most RnB artist calls themselves Hip-Hop artist.
From using this software’s I have learnt to make magazines in a professional way, this has helped me become more organised when producing something. From my preliminary task I have learnt to do more research and find codes and convention on other magazines that already exist to help me on my own magazine. On this full task I know that I done better because I done a lot of research. I had to find the brand values on a certain magazine that I looked at which was vibe. The brand values of the magazine helped me on who was my target audience which was 17-29, so once I knew this, I knew what who to aim my magazines to.