Drafts/mock-ups of 4 pages

I created these drafts/mock-ups for the purpose of planning how I was going to lay out my final production. This means that I can see how I would like my final production to look and can then decide on any changes I would like to make from these drafts. They also allow me to picture where I want certain things across the four pages, to make it easier to then design them on the computer, with the drafts to then refer to and gain ideas from.

Location Recce

Before my photoshoot I traveled to different locations to assess which I preferred to use in my production, with the purpose of thinking ahead as to what I wanted in my final designs in terms of lighting, background and the conventions of these locations when combined with the costumes/props I would also use. The pictures below show the locations I visited when planning where to base my photoshoots, with models included to help me get an idea of where I wanted them in the shot for my final shots I would take.

Model Planning - Decision making process for my models

I considered many different models when planning who to use in my production, by thinking about whether they reinforced the typical/expected conventions of the hip-hop/r&b genre I had chosen or subverted it. My options that I considered varied in ethnicity, race and gender, to give me more thought into who would best target the specific audience tied to our genre of magazine, as the better targetted the magazine is at its audience, the better it will sell and be recognised. I mainly focussed my magazine on more masculine models that audiences would look up to, and also for the purpose of being able to show their stereotypes which reinforce the hip-hop/r&b genre, for example, how the black model I used stereotypically links to this genre the most. Because I wanted to stick to a more stereotypical magazine for my chosen genre that best focussed on its target audience, I didn't include a female model, as this didn't seem the right way of best displaying the genre and its typical conventions, as women are stereotypically known to have less authority and dominance, which I don't want my magazine to portray to its target audience.

Model Release Forms

The purpose of these model release forms is to gain consent from those who I include in my production, saying that they all allow me to use the pictures I take of them on my blog and in my production.

Risk Assessments

The purpose of these risk assessments for the locations I plan to use for my photos in my production is so that the risks are assessed, indicating the hazards and their level of risk when taking my photos, therefore outlining any key issues or hazards that may be dangerous. However, filling in these risk assessments for each location, I found that there was no hazard outlined that was too dangerous.

Costumes

Conventions of existing mastheads for R&B

From searching R&B magazines into google search I discovered the large variety of mastheads that appeared. From the results, I gathered that the typical conventions of the mastheads relate to the music of the magazine and the words are often associated/link to the genre it focusses on. Looking closer at the names of the masthead, such as 'Vibe' and 'XXL', they all have their own deeper meaning that would have been thought about carefully, which are created to capture readers more. The masthead/name appears to be a big factor on magazines as they are one of the first conventions seen by the audience, so with it relating to the music and genre, this would create more of an effect than a random name would have.

Masthead Final Choice

This is the final choice for our masthead. 'Unveil' was thought of by wanting to aim the name at the target audience/reader, therefore we thought about the meaning of 'discovering' new music, artists and information from the magazine, so the word 'Unveil' has the meaning of showing new things and presenting unique information, which persuades the audience that they may uncover more in this magazine. This name wasn't our initial idea, as it took a while to come up with something like this with a number previous ideas, such as 'Deeper', which was supposed to connote that there was more to the stories and music than what there seemed to be, however, receiving feedback showed us that other meaning may have opened up that were not suitable for a music magazine.

Online Tutorials and Response

My Tutorial


This is the tutorial I used to develop my skills in photoshop, although I understand how use some of the features already, I still learned a few more skills in this tutorial, by it showing how to do each skill in detail, step by step.

Kyra's Tutorial


This tutorial does not go into much detail with many techniques on photoshop, as these are simple skills that I already know, therefore I do not learn anything from this youtube tutorial.

Oliver's Tutorial


This tutorial is quite detailed with the advanced lighting effects/techniques it shows and explains how to use and can help me in my production if I used these certain effects in some way, however, this tutorial shows more specific techniques and it would therefore be difficult to implement this into my production.

Resources/Equipment

Risk Assessment

Social Media Research

Contents Page Mock up

Preliminary Front Cover and Contents Page

Evidence in Photoshop

Preliminary Hand Drawn Designs

Preliminary Evidence of Planning

This is the initial image of what I used on the Preliminary front cover before it was edited. The other images below show my progression to find the right picture I thought was best to use.

I also tampered with a few filters to see which seemed more matching to the look I wanted to go for in the preliminary.

Final Pitch

From the large volume of research we gathered involving music magazines, we found there was many useful factors that would be important to make ours a success. Firstly, as a group we considered what editions we would make for our magazine to give the audience a variety of topics, however we haven't yet made a final decision on three topics we have chosen.

The things we would like to take forward include:

Typography:

• Sans Serif Font (no flicks).
• Text and image spaced wisely.

Colour:

• Black, white, grey and red are the main colours that our research found to be the most associated with R&B.
• A simple and unique house style throughout the 3 editions we create will show how our magazines all link to the same.

Images:

• We all decided that a revealing and provocative image would attract buyers more, and that it is the most important aspect on a magazine, that needs to be thought about in the most detail.

Media Language:

• Colloquial language appears to be the language best suited to the R&B genre audiences as shown by the research we gathered.

Analysing Focus Group

In this task we set out to get more open responses to that of what we got in the questionnaire. Kyra, Oliver and I worked together to come up with a list of questions that we could ask our focus group, where we also came up with others that we thought of at the time. Overall, it was very successful because the students we asked were within our target audience, with the students being able to speak their mind, giving us unscripted, open responses they thought of on the spot.
The first question we asked was "What type of music magazine would you most likely buy?" interestingly, we didn't get any responses that were for R&B, however we did receive two responses that were of pop music because of the colours you could experiment with and the fact it is mainstream, with the other response for this question being an independent music magazine. His reason for this choice was because they're interested in new and upcoming artists, which is backed up by our questionnaire responses as we had a large proportion say they'd like to see new and upcoming artists on the front cover of a magazine.
We then asked "what price would you consider reasonable for the magazine?" and we got responses ranging from £1.50-£3.99, with reasons being because the price shouldn't be a put off for the audience, because the magazine wants to sell to all ages and needs to use a reasonable price so that all can afford it.
Following this question, we asked the interviewees "Baring that price in mind what would you expect to gain or receive from the magazine?", with responses being simply that there should be a lot of content within the magazine for it to be worth the money. The other responses were stories on new and upcoming artists that would benefit the audience.
The next question asks the students whether a male or female should be on the front cover and the female student thought that a male should be on the cover for the "eye candy" whilst the two males thought that it should be a female because it is unconventional and something different to seeing famous male artists on the front.
The next question, relating to the previous question, we asked "should they be attractive?" the responses were generally very similar, being that they should be attractive, however, not too attractive because it could pressurise younger audiences to try to look like them, leading to younger generations being less positive about their looks and be less motivated.
After this, we asked "what stories are you interested in and what would you expect to see in the magazine?" with the feedback we received on this question, it revealed that our target audience aren't too interested in gossip, but are interested on new and upcoming artists, music stories and upcoming events, assisting us in how we can produce our magazine.
Lastly, we asked "Which features would you consider most important?" This question was a very important one as we received some very helpful feedback. The first response was how the main image should be eye catching and colourful otherwise she would not likely buy it, the next response was that the contents page should be well structured and clear to follow, in order for the consumer of the magazine to not waste their time flicking through trying to find the relevant page. Finally, the last response was the structure of the front cover because a well structured front cover is very successful compared to a front cover with small letters in the corner of the page.

Focus Group

Final Questionnaire Analysed

Question 1:

The first question asks what age you would consider the main target audience to be for an R&B magazine, with the average response being 18, which backs up what we were initially saying when mentioning teenagers/young adults.

Question 2:

Question 2 asks for which type of house style is most expected for an R&B magazine, with dark colours being first, grayscale being second and bright colours being third, all on average, which shows that the typical stereotype of an R&B genre tend to be darker and more masculine than compared to a pop magazine for example, which is what we originally predicted.

Question 3:

The third question asks about whether the magazine being visual or textual is more appealing to the audience, with the results clearly still showing that the music magazines need to be well done visually.

Question 4:

This question asked which type of language would be most appropriate for the R&B genre of magazine, with the responses being colloquial, with standard English being second, showing that the language can use slang but would be wanted to be still understandable.

Question 5:

All applicants who filled out the question involving whether formal or informal information is preferred, displaying how informal language would be most appropriate to the target audience, as the younger generation aren’t as bothered about written communication and abbreviations.

Question 6:

Here, san-serif is still preferred, as the target audience are still ok with the normal style of language and communication that is being used to display the information.

Question 7:

According to our results, the male demographic is still seen as more appealing to the target audience, showing that there is a strong view on how genres display themselves to their specific target audience.

Question 8:

Although it is very close, the male is shown by the results as the best to include on the main image of the cover, with both genders still being ok to use with similar responses and feedback.

Question 9:

From this question, it is gathered that more popular artists would be best to be used on the main image of the cover rather than new and upcoming ones. I agree with this as more popular artist would be more recognisable, therefore, they will attract more people to buy the magazine.

Question 10:

The last question is in favour of provocative images having a strong influence on the target audience buying the magazine, as the R&B genre targeting teens and young adults tend to set examples and trends that are then normally followed/copied depending on the artist.

Final Questionnaire Summaries (Pictures)