Evaluation Question 1 & 2

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

I attempted to follow the practice of conventions of the genre of my music magazine (SUAV). I considered features of music magazine conventions such as the format, mise-en-scene and the layout. The inspirations for my magazine were mainly VIBE and Q magazine as they are both well suited for the genre of music that I chose and also for my audience. I noticed that red, black and white were the three colours mainly used in most of these magazines (through my case studies) and this then lead me to use these colours as they were popular and looked quite classy. Furthermore, I only used three main colours to keep the magazine looking consistent and professional throughout (cover, contents page and DPS). The three colours I used also worked well as they all stood out against the black background, making it easier for the reader to see. I noticed that most music magazines have their masterhead either on top of the model or behind the model in order to show who is important, however I decided to challenge this and have them both in the foreground. I did this to show that they were both as important. Also through the research from my case studies, I noticed that the masterhead of VIBE magazine was always bold, big and stood out. I then tried to the same by having my masterhead in a large, bold font in red, to stand out against the black background of the cover. Instead of just focusing on one genre of music, I wanted to challenge this and focus on a fusion of two types, this was so I could gain a larger audience of readers. VIBE and Q magazine didn’t seem to have a lot of teasers/ cover lines on their front covers, I thought this was a good thing as it didn’t give too much away and it also didn’t make the magazine look to clustered. This then lead me to do the same with my magazine and I therefore only used a few teasers. To immediately show the readers what types of music would be included in the magazine, I decided to make my skyline names of artists that would possibly be included in the magazine. The main image on the cover is a medium close-up of a young, black man, holding a mic and giving full eye contact with the camera. The eye contact was an important thing, as I noticed that most magazines had this as it makes the magazine more personal towards the readers. I decided to have him doing a cheeky smile, in order to entice my female audience and also have his chest showing with an unseen womans hand holding his chest. This was to make the picture look ‘sexy’. I used a black backdrop in the picture to make it look sophisticated and so that it would work well with my colour scheme. I also noticed that in VIBE and Q contents pages, they generally have a large image of the person on the front cover on one page, and then they also have various other pictures that relate with the contents on the other. I tried to do the same and therefore had two contents pages. In my double page spread, I had a number of pictures of my artist doing various poses. I did this so that the audience could feel a sense of his personality. I got this idea from my case study of VIBE magazine. I used columns to write my story as this is a convention of a DPS and I did not want to challenge this. I also used a pull quote from the interview in the DPS to lure the readers into actually reading the interview.

2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?

My magazine primarily represented black males; however it was aimed at both males and females between the ages of 16 – 35. This is because my main story was focused on a young, black male; however, using him as the main story would then attract young females. Also using the stereotype of a black artist helped me represent my target audience for an R&B and Soul magazine. SUAV would mainly appeal to this targeted audience as firstly the name was taken from the word ‘suave’, meaning classy. I used this as a title to show that the magazine is classy and can appeal to a mature audience, but also to a younger audience as the word ‘suave’ is also used as a slang word to similarly mean smart and on trend. R&B and Soul is known to be smooth and expressive and therefore, I chose to represent my artist in that exact way, using his clothing and pose to help push my intensions through and allow the audience to see this. The eye contact with the camera, the smirk and the unbuttoned shirt was all intentional as it made the magazine look sexy and sex is known to sell, especially in the R&B industry.