AS Media Coursework Magazine Proposals

Shelby Derbyshire

Musical Niche

The musical niche that I have chosen to use for my magazine is R&B, it is an abbreviation for rhythm and blues. It’s a genre of popular African American music that originated in the 1940’s. The term was originally used by record companies to describe recordings marketed predominantly to urban African Americans at a time when “urbane , rocking, jazz based music with a heavy, insistent beat” was becoming more popular.

Popular ArtistsSome of the artists that have been and still are very successful under the R&B genre are Beyonce, Jay Z, Nicki Minaj, Alicia Keys and Kanye West etc. These artists have dominated the charts with there endless mega hits and char toppers. R&B is one of the more popular genres of music and so you are constantly confronted with it in today’s society because your always hearing it on the radio, music channels and through friends.

Visual IconographyThroughout my magazine I am only going to use a maximum of three colours as if I use any more it will look too busy and it may put the viewer off. The colours that I will use will all compliment each other well so that will be sure to catch the eye of the onlooker. The fonts that I am going to use will be in bold as when I did my questionnaire the participants all said that they prefer to see bolder fonts on a magazine than they do softer fonts.

BOLD

AudienceThe audience for my magazine is anybody as no matter whether your aged 17 or 45, male or female, lower, medium or higher class it is suitable for you to read as R&B is a genre of music that is hugely popular among all ages. But I will say I believe that the way I am going to design my magazine will make it more appealing towards 15 – 25 year old.

Layout StyleMy magazine will have a simple layout consisting of a masthead, few images, a few sub-headings and writing to ensure that it doesn’t all look too squashed together and off putting. It will be all spaced out equally so that is doesn’t confuse the browser and make them push the magazine to the bottom of the pile and instead make them not be able to take their eyes off it. It will be set out like these other R&B magazines shown below.

ImagesThe images featuring in my magazine will be striking for several reasons some of these reasons will be because the person/people in the images will be giving direct eye contact to the onlooker which will make them connect with the magazine straight away, another reason will be because the people in my images will be pretty, and also the attitudes that they will be portraying will be intriguing because they will be looking confident and full of swagger which most definitely links in to the magazine because the name of the magazine ironically is “SWAGGA”. It will look a little something like this image below as Kanye West in this images look confident and full of swagger.

Language StyleThe style of language that I will be using throughout my magazine is informal as after getting my questionnaire answers back I have found my audience would prefer to have that style of language rather than informal. Also I don’t think that formal writing would go along well with the genre of the magazine, as through experience of reading R&B magazines and researching them I have found that they all have slang within them, and I feel that the readers would be much more comfortable with it being informal.

Article TopicThe article that I will be featuring in my magazine will be about my sister who sings and is doing recordings at the moment and is trying to break into the music industry. She will feature in the main image and there will be a question and answer type article about her inside on the double page spread.

Colour SchemeThe colour scheme that I will be using be a mix of no more than three colours, and the reason for this is that I believe that if any more than that amount of colours is used it will make the magazine look to distracting and tacky. The colours I will be using will also be consistent throughout the pages, as if the colours change from page to page it will make the magazine look unprofessional. They will all compliment each other and make the magazine jump right out at the onlooker and immediately make them want to purchase it.

Effect I want to achieveThe effect that I want to achieve with displaying my magazine this way is to give a true reflection of the R&B scene and to promote up and coming artists. To be able to give a true reflection, I will have to make sure that everything from the colours I use to the clothing the people in my images will be wearing all link in with theme which is R&B and not Rock, Indie or any other genre of music.