Marinda Ofori Appiah

my music magazine uses lots of forms and conventions to create a real magazine. It features lots of one artists which could be improved by adding various artist to make the magazine look more creative. It has a masthead called ‘Soul Funk’, it has an issue date at the top of the magazine and has a barcode, page numbers, the price of the magazine etc. On my contents page it contains different images of artists as well as other famous soul train musicians. The reason why I used these colours is to communicate the meaning of soul and culture through these colours. I also looked at many soul train magazines and they mostly use these colours to represent the genre of their magazines

What I could have to help improve my front cover magazine is to change the masthead font and the colour make more vibrant and colourful so that the magazine can stand out more. I would have also improved the colour of thee background and make the main image stand out. I will the improve the rearrangements of the features and change the colour and text so that it becomes more clearer to read and more attracting to see.

How my music magazine represents a particular social group is by the use of images used and the sell lines given for example the use of the masthead ‘soul funk’ brings in a particular audience like African Americans which also was originated from black African Americans who mostly listen to this kind of genre. The name of my masthead and sell lines/features used would help draw my target audience. My image will also help attract my social group as she is young black and beautiful with the good use of mise en scene for example the make-up and the clothes she is wearing.

The target audience of my music magazine would be adults from the early age of 40’s to 60’s. However within the modern age a younger audience will also listen to this kind of music genre for example from the age to the reason why these type of target audience will listen to this music is because due to my research this type of generation like listening to soul funk as it is a dominated kind of music within the young and old audience.

How I attracted or addressed my audience was by using bright colourful colours to bring forth the attention of my audience. I used the colour red for masthead because I know that this will make my magazine look bold and also is a popular colour used in most soul train magazines. My main image also helped attract my audience as the character itself looks jolly and happy, it also helps appeal to my target audience and music genre by her make-up and what she is wearing.

What I learnt by using technologies in processing my music magazine was learning new techniques for example learning how to crop images and making pictures look professional using special effects through Photoshop. I also learnt different ways in creating a magazine by using different software’s such as publisher which helped me do my masthead using word, rearrange texts and words etc. I have also learnt how to use different conventions on magazines like putting barcodes issue dates and price tags.

The comparison between creating my school magazine and music magazine is a huge difference because you create and develop new skills in your music magazine because you get to create both front cover page, double page spread and a contents page. You can also use a variety of images on your magazine to make it look more professional. Making my music magazine has given me more of a chance of learning new techniques in creating more of professional piece using software’s like Photoshop and also using special effects. Whereas in the school magazine we just created a front cover page and a contents page which didn't give me the chance to develop new skills on Photoshop and other software's. It also limited me in taking a variety of good pictures for my student magazine which I could have improved.