Media Evaluation Harry Foulger

In what ways does you media product use, develop or challenge forms or

conventions of real media products?

The Title FUTURE MUSIC stands for “The Future Of Music” and I believe the title is key to gathering an audience. I wanted my magazine to give off a R&B style and the use of the image of the artist dressed in a suit shows of this convention well. The magazines I looked at in the research part of this project showed a variety of different ways R&B artist can be portrayed and I chose to go with the smart look.

The use of the Red, Black and Grey colour scheme also gives my magazine a professional feel and also pushes the smart feel further as things are not over complicated and are simple but still bold. The “Vibe” magazine i looked at in the research phase also uses a low key colour scheme and it has worked with good affect so hopefully mine has to. The red gives of the connotation to be scared but this is not what i was aiming to connotation when producing my magazine, it was just to draw the reader in.

The language through out my product is literate to the genre of music. It is not over elaborate but at the sane time does not use words found in magazines aimed at a pop fan base.

How Does My Media Product Represent Social Groups?

My magazine is aimed at people of all ages who enjoy R&B based music. But Mainly 16-25 year olds as this is the information i gathered from my questionnaire.

The fact that the title is Future Music also gives my target audience belief that they can be the future of music and reading this magazine can help them. This will attract those people with music ambitions which a vast amount of people in this age group have. Also music is part of peoples life's and today’s music is also the music for the future, linking in to the title.

The colour scheme is simple yet bold at the same time to link into the clean cut way R&B artists portray themselves.

What Institutions would Distribute My Product?

I believe my magazine could be sold alongside other R&B music magazines such as Vibe and Blender.

My magazine could be sold firstly as a pull out in these leading magazines and once the fan base has risen for it the sell the product separately giving this area more competition.

The are a range of places in which a magazine can be sold, supermarkets, shops, newsagents and even stalls. This will then give my magazine a wide range of places to sell hopefully ending in a profit.

The fact magazine can be distributed in an array of ways is good as if a particular area is dominated by one type of music that isn't R&B then there are more places in which the magazine can sell.

The current R&B magazines already in stores are predominantly aimed at 16-25 year olds , so although there is healthy competition the product is aimed correctly.

Who is the target audience?

16-25 year olds are the main audience I aimed my product at however people of all ages are also interested in these particular genre magazines.

I believe this is my target audience as people at these ages are often listen to music very frequently, may it be at a club, house party or even in there University dorm . Also people within this age are also more likely to buy a magazine as people from the older age groups either read books or newspapers and those of a younger age are maybe not literate enough to the language used in magazines.

Many R&B artist also base there music on past experiences and the fact that 16-25 year olds are around the ages they are talking about in there songs means they can relate to the lyrics.

What Have I Learnt ?

Through out this project have learnt an array of new skills both on Photoshop and learning how a music magazine is put into place.

I have grown in confidence using Photoshop as during my preliminary task i found this programme particularly hard and avoided using it in the end. However now i have put together a music magazine using the programme and believe it is at a suitable standard.

I have also learnt, through my research tasks, the history behind R&B music and how it was generate by African Americans in the 1940’s.

In addition to this I have also learnt about the two third rule when it comes to a double page spread. The image usually takes up two thirds of the page leaving just a third for writing.

Feed Back

I showed my final products to some people and asked what they thought.

There was some positive feed back but also some people pointed out the aspects of my magazine that should and could be improved.

The people I showed it to think the magazine gives off a professional feel and the colour scheme was good, however they feel the image on the front cover could be of a better quality and maybe use an older person as my target audience may be put off by the younger artist on the cover.

Another positive I received was the subheadings were good and gave the reader a key idea off what was to come inside. But they also said that the front cover was based more around the rap side of R&B which can out some people off.