YouTube tutorial

Click here to watch the tutorial which I followed in order to create a rip in the image using Photoshop

I followed this tutorial to experiment with my from cover. This was my first attempt at trying this out and I am fairly happy with the result.

As this was a first attempt at something like this on photoshop I am happy with how it turned out due to my previous little knowledge about different photoshop skills. The tutorial was hard to understand at first, however with the subtitles on and going through it slowly the skills were a lot easier to learn than I first believed them to be.

However, it was not very popular compared to my there images on my questionnaire so I will not use it. I can however use the technique I learnt somewhere else in my magazine.

R&B fashion

Click here to read the article I found about top R&B fashion stylist Ty Hunter from Teen Vogue.
He styles R&B celebrities such Beyonce and John Legend, so anyone interested in R&B will know of him and would be interested in reading about him, therefore making my magazine more appealing to my target audience if he was to be a feature of it.

There are also articles about him on Cosmopolitan, click here to read.

Focus Group

Name: Ross Bermon

Age: 17

Occupation: School (A Levels) at Southend High School for Girls

Hobbies: Loves music, playing rugby, socializing with friends

Music Industry: Ross accesses all of his music through the app Spotify; he pays £9.95 per month. He also occasionally buys CD’s if it is his favourite album and it as a meaning to him so he therefore wants to remember it and have a hard copy. He does not often buy music magazines but he said if he does, it will always be ‘Q’, like the CD’s, he will only buy a copy if the feature artist is someone he really likes and wants it for a memory, as otherwise he can access it online for free. The only concerts he’s been to us Example and he went to Vfestival in the summer, he said he would like to go to more, it is just very expensive to go.

Name: Aimee Gras

Age: 17

Occupation: School (A Levels) at Southend High School for Girls

Hobbies: loves swimming, music, socializing with her friends

Music Industry: Aimee accesses all of her music through Apple Music for £9.99 a month. She says she does not buy CDs as she only has a speaker which works via Bluetooth and her laptop is a Mac which does not have a space to insert a CD/DVD, so she therefore does not see the point in buying them. She says she does however regularly buy ‘Billboard’ magazines to keep up to date with everything going on and collects all of the issues. The only concerts she has been to is Vfestival as she also thinks they are very expensive and hard to get hold of tickets.

Name: Sam Latcham

Age: 20

Occupation: Assistant manager of The Anchor pub in Danbury

Hobbies: loves cars, football, seeing his friends, going to festivals in the summer

Music Industry: Sam has a Spotify subscription, which costs him £9.95 per month. He also is car obsessed so either uses his phone to play music on long journeys via Spotify by using Bluetooth, or plays his favourite Coldplay or Ed Sheeran CD which he purchased as he felt it had more sentimental value. He also loves going to Brownstock festival every year with his group of friends. He has gone every summer for the past 5 years due to the appearances always being people he is interested in, as well as for the social side of the festival. Sam said he never purchases magazines as he feels that they are not as important anymore due to all of the information being online, so rather than spending the money he would rather save it.

Name: Millie Steel

Age: 16

Occupation: School (A Levels) at Westcliff High School for Girls

Hobbies: loves football, netball, playing and listening to music, socializing with her friends

Music Industry: Millie accesses all of her music through Apple Music Family sharing for £14.99 a month. She says she does not buy CDs as she only has a speaker which works via Bluetooth and her laptop is a Mac which does not have a space to insert a CD/DVD, so she therefore does not see the point in buying them. She says she does however regularly buy music magazines as she took A Level music, so buys them reguarlly for extra reading. The only concerts she has been to is Vfestival as she also thinks they are very expensive and hard to get hold of tickets.

Lexicon of R&B words

Questionnaire results

Question 1:  

From these results it is evident that my option 1 was the most popular image as it received 81.8% of votes. This shows that it would appeal to people more and would make a successful front cover, so I will therefore use this image.




Question 2:

 The results from my questionnaire successfully showed that the majority (45.5%) understood that the genre of my magazine is R&B based by the images previously shown in question 1. This therefore means my images represent the genre well.




Question 3:

There was a clear majority vote that the name "Jukebox" is more suitable for the magazines header. The name relates to music in general and the word is commonly used in R&B songs to represent the origination of the jukebox. So to use this as the name of the magazine is a good idea as it links with the context and is also different and interesting so it will appeal to my target demographic.





Question 4:










Option 1 had a 72.7% majority so it was clearly more popular than the other fonts. It is a decorative font which links to the R&B genre as it is creative and artistic, which the R&B genre is commonly associated with being. It is also clear and easy to read as well as being fun.



Question 5:

From this question it is evident that not many people buy magazines very regularly, the majority of people buy magazines yearly (40%). To address the issue of magazines not being as popular anymore, my magazine will include exclusives and things which people will not be able to access anywhere else.



Question 6:

100% of my responses said that my target audience is teens, which is who I aimed my magazine out. This shows that from the images it is clear who my audience is which means it will appeal to them more and therefore be more successful.



Question 7:













From my results 54.5% of people voted that option 2 would be the most suitable image for the contents page of the magazine. The model in the image is positioned well so there is room for the article. it also sticks to the genre as it continues as it continued the R&B theme.



Question 8:

From my results it is evident that 63.6% of people preferred the edited image without a filter, compared to the others , one of which was black and white and another was a blue ombre effect with a photoshopped tear in the page. This shows that maybe a colourful and original photo may be more appealing to my target demographic. The black and white one was the 2nd most popular with 27.3%.

Q magazine- Media pack

Here is the link to Bauer Media about the statistics behind Q Magazine.
Q have an ABC1 profile, which is the same demographic I was planning on aiming my magazine at as they are consumers from the 3 highest social and economic groups, which consist of people who have more/higher education and better-paid jobs than those in other groups therefore meaning they have money to spend on magazines.

BillboardBiz- Media business matters

Click here to read an article published by Billboard in May 2013 about the business of media.

Before and after-edited photo

The image on the left is the edited picture I took, the one on the right is the unedited original photo.
It is clear to see that even with a small amount of editing on iPhoto, it makes a huge difference on the image. I enhanced the image, which adjusted the levels, making the image automatically looking improved. I also used the retouch tool to touch up any blemishes which were visible in the original picture, which gave the photo a cleaner finish. I also used this tool to remove the lines from the background in the photo, which makes it look more professional.

Planning-contacts sheets

These are all of the images I took today, there were a total of 350 images in total.
I was very happy with the images I took as a lot of them I would be able to use in my magazine.
The quality of the images were also very good- I used a Cannon 1600D.

InDesign tutorial

I used an YouTube tutorial for InDesign in order to learn all of the basics on how to use it.

Click here in order to see the tutorial I used.

'RnB Magazine'-research

'RnB' magazine all follow a fairly basic yet effective design. They mainly just consist of a block colour background with a large central image of the feature artist, as well as the same logo and font, just in different colours.
This gives the magazine a much more artistic feel, which links to the R&B genre, therefore appealing to the target audience. I will use ideas from this when designing my magazine to enable it to be more successful and relate well to my genre.

Flatplan of music magazine-Double Page Spread

I again have planned my double page spread to follow the codes and conventions of one in a magazine, however I have also followed a similar style to Beat magazine which follows a slightly more contemporary and artistic design. I have kept the masthead, page numbers, layout and website address the same throughout in order to follow these codes and conventions, along with smaller details such as a drop-cap and pull quotes. However, I have decided to use smaller, more natural images to show the more natural side of the interview to make it look less put on and organised. I also plan to use a silhouette of my feature artist on a block colour background to give a more urban and artistic feel to the magazine, following the R&B style.

Flatplan of music magazine-Contents Page

My contents page also follows the typical codes and conventions of a contents page of a magazine. It has features and regulars columns, which give insights into what is in the magazine with large page numbers in order to tell the reader where they can read about each feature. It also contains images from main articles in the magazine to give a preview and promote the feature. It also has a subscription box to enable readers to keep up with the magazine's issues, as well as social networking information to encourage interaction between the reader and magazine.

Flatplan of music magazine-Front Cover

This is the flat plan for my front cover of my music magazine. I have decided to follow the codes and conventions of magazines by having the masthead large and central at the top of the page, and to have one featured artist taking up the majority of the page. I have also added tag lines which will go down the side of the page, as well as a bar code, date and price, which all magazines have.

chapter 3 summary

Magazine Analysis 3- Rockbound magazine

Magazine Analysis 2- Q magazine

click here to see my magazine analysis 2 of Q magazine

Magazine Analysis 1- Acoustic magazine