Sasha-Louise Ajodheea

The target audience of my magazine are unsigned artists who have a dream to have a music career. It is aimed at young adults, mainly interested in R&B and Hip Hop music from any class or background, promoting diversity.With advice from celebrities, news in the music industry and opportunities for unsigned artists to be heard, I think my magazine can help to achieve the dream the readers have. I believe my colour scheme reflects the genre of music well, the use of dark colours such as black and grey signify an urban environment where stereotypically R&B/Hip Hop and Rap music is associated with. I chose to use a font which seemed bold and prominent (Poplar Std) in order to reflect the characteristics of R&B music; to be powerful and outstanding.

I gathered my audience research from a questionnaire created on Zoomerang. The six questions I used were:

1. Are you male or female?2. Which age group do you belong to?3. Which music do you prefer to listen to?4. Current subscriptions to magazines?5. What would attract you most to buying a magazine?6. What is the most you would spend on a music magazine?

Each response to the questionnaire helped me to mould my magazine to the largest audience possible. I posted the questionnaire on Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites in order for my target audience, young adults, to be able to take part in my research.

1. 76% Female 24% Male

2. 76% 15-17 years old6% 18-20 years old18% Over 21 years old

3. 59% R&B/HipHop29% Rock/Indie24% Pop6% Other- Glam Rock and Heavy Metal

4. 12% has subscriptions88% hasn’t got subscriptions

5. 35% Image53% Captivating Stories12% Freebies

6. 47% £1-£247% £3-£46% Over £4

Therefore, I chose to base my magazine around 15-21 year old males interested in R&B/Hip Hop packed with captivating stories, exclusive headlines and freebies for a price of £2.50

The whole of the title doesn’t need to be shown due to the distinctive house style. The full image then can be shown without being spoilt at the top.

The barcode is placed vertically to leave more space for the magazine content.

I like how the red and white contrasts the dark colours and i chose to incorporate this into mine.

The mid shot shows the outfit of the model and therefore not only promotes music, but the fashion and culture of music too.

I like the plain simplicity of just one background colour so I chose to use this feature with my magazine

•My masthead is coloured black to contrast the grey background. The bold uppercase letters also signify a sense of importance and individuality. The lines above and below it are continued throughout the magazine to build a significant house style.•The story headline and subheading is positioned on the right hand third in order to challenge conventions of typical magazines. Consequently, the magazine must be placed at the front on the shelf in a shop in order to gain the full impact of the magazine.•The banner across the bottom draws attention due to the use of capitalisation and contrasting white lettering with the black strip. The word ‘win’ stands by itself to attract the audience and coax them to want to find out more as not much info is revealed on how to win Wireless tickets.•The main selling story is the biggest text feature, using ‘free transform’ in order for the text to be a specific width which a normal font size couldn’t achieve. The image supporting the main story is aptly a contrasting red to the grey and immediately draws attention to readers.

Renaming the contents page to something different other than ‘contents’ gives a difference to other magazines, much like The Source does. I chose to use this technique to challenge the conventions of other magazines such as Vibe.

The line under the heading is effective as it gives clear separation and looks very professional, I chose to interpret this as my house style.

I like the collage of images on this page, it gives a good insight to who or what features in the magazine.

The contents list is split into different categories which enables readers to easily navigate to pages of interest, due to the headings.

•I chose images that were relevant to the ‘Featured’ column as these are the main selling stories. The cover star is clearly marked by a red circle to show importance and to draw attention.•I included subscription information as this is what a lot of magazines from my research do, in order to not let readers miss out on a single issue.•I tried to ensure with my images used that they contrasted the black background so they didn’t blend in and become insignificant to my contents page.•The house style is still continued with the lines above and below the ‘Contents’

With the image taking up one half of the double page spread, it shows importance and significance to the article. I chose to use this technique to apply emphasis to the interviewee.

The typography is promoting a bold statement to show power and importance. This helped to choose my font to convey the right connotations behind the font.

The black clothing contrasts the white background to draw attention to the image and convey it’s boldness. I chose for my model to wear contrasting black and white for this matter.

Using a quote from the interview is very effective as it gives a clear idea of what the article is about and draws attention to the reader.

The contrast between font and background also allows the writing to stand out and therefore I chose this technique also.

Again, a mid shot of the interviewee takes up half of the double page spread and I feel this is very effective for the article.

•The white heading and white t-shirt instantly contrast the dark background which consequently makes it clear what is important on the page and deliberately made to stand out.•I used small images of the interviewee, Kayo, in order to show emotion throughout the interview. This can encourage empathy and understanding of atmosphere of the interview.•I chose the heading to be a quote from Kayo himself, quotation marked, as I saw some magazines used this technique. I found it quite effective so used it as a main focus of the double page spread.•The heading continues the house style of the two lines above and below.

Planning: I sketched ideas for my photos in order for me to cnstruct my image shots. Through experimenting with the camera and working with what I had, my ideas changed but developed for the better.

Shot distance and Framing/Composition: I used the zoom function on my camera in order to get the focus of my model yet also the background of the landscape as I thought this would be a good front cover idea. I then later changed my mind and cut the background out and replaced it with a block colour in Photoshop. I took over 100 shots and sorted through all of them to decipher the best shot angles- i used a mid shot image like most other music magazine.

Colour: I enhanced the colour by adjusting the saturation of the image to make the image less dull due to bad weather and it contrasted my background much better.

Mise en scene: I ensured my subject wore contrasting colours to the background so it’d be easier to edit and cut out in Photoshop. I took some shots with proper such as speakers but then decided that it took the focus from the subject and therefore used stance and expression as well as colours to portray a theme.

I had never used Photoshop before to edit my pictures, so this was new to me and I feel I’ve learnt alot from scratch with this software.

• I changed the saturation of my image to give my model more of a radiant glow as the image colour quality wasn’t that great due to the outside weather/lighting conditions.•I cut out the background using the lasso tool and added a new layer of block grey colour to replace the background in the image. This tool also allowed my image to overlap over my masthead. •I used the crop tool to crop my image to a more appropriate size to work with.•I selected ‘free transform’ in order to change the dimensions of my images and text to achieve the size I wanted to fill my magazine space.•I learnt how do add effects to my pictures such as ‘posterize’, ‘gradients’ and different patterns. However, i chose not to use these as I wanted my images to be in their normal form like every other magazine does,

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The progress from my preliminary task to my finished product is predominantly evident, my skills have developed so much. I’m now able to add backgrounds and effects, angle my shots for images correctly and relevantly and also edit and scale my pictures with accuracy. I’m proud of what I have been able to produce and achieve from my coursework!

‘BACKSTAGE’ follows codes and conventions of other music magazines by including interviews, freebies and celeb gossip. The images I used were similar to those I saw in other magazines or musicians and I tried to copy and recreate this look in order to follow form.

Challenging the codes and conventions of other magazines, the stories headings are on the right hand third in order for the magazine to have to be stacked at the front of the shelf, consequently displaying the whole front cover as opposed to them being on the left third.From my research, freebies was quite a popular selling point. I made sure the freebie was highlighted as taken note of by contrasting the background colour to attract the readers.The font is all capitalised, which goes against alot of magazines. This shows importance, dominance and boldness.

‘Vibe’ magazine is very influential upon ‘BACKSTAGE’ and they are similar in many ways, due to my ideas being developed from the structure of ‘Vibe’ and it’s conventions.Founded by Quincy Jones in association with Time Inc, if my magazine was to be distributed by them, my magazine would be very successful. With Quincy Jones being very popular, my product would gain publicity and popularity by being promoted by someone in the music industry. In addition, being approved by and linked to somebody famous, it gives readers the idea that after gaining acceptance, that the magazine must be good for a role model like himself to be able to want to read and take an interest in the magazine.