Evaluation 1

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

Through researching the genre that I had chosen I was able to create a plan for my music magazine and later on execute those ideas in order to form my Afrobeat’s music magazine. I began my research by finding out where Afrobeat’s originated from. I found out that Afrobeat is a music genre which developed in the 1970s out of a combination of West African musical styles, such as Juju Music, Nigeria's most referred, mainstream, internationally toured and Grammy recognised Country music, Fuji music, which was influenced by the western assembles borrowed from its leading native category (the Juju music) and highlife together with American funk and jazz, with a focus on chanted vocals and percussion.

The information I received through research made it easier to start thinking of ideas. I'm from Ghana and I discovered that the genre originates from Nigeria and Ghana so I started to look at Ghanaian culture to gather ideas for costume. I think that having background knowledge of my own country made the process of making my front cover straightforward. Although I couldn't find an afrobeat’s magazine contents page and DPS, I found a lot of images of a front cover. Therefore, I was able to use images for inspiration. Comparing my old front cover to my new front cover, I can see how my skills on photoshop have improved. The first front cover that I came up with was quite simple whereas afrobeat’s is supposed to represent Africa, and when thinking about Africa, vibrant colours come into mind. I compared my old front cover to an existing Afrobeat’s magazine front cover and I noticed that there were a few similarities. My main image was similar to the main image of the real magazine, in terms of the model’s hand gestures. My aim was to make my model look majestic and elegant whilst still giving a fierce pose/look. I analysed a variety of front covers and I couldn't find many that reflected the African culture, therefore I had to think about the costume and the type of shot I wanted to take. I went to look for African material as I imagined the model wearing an African material on her head as a headscarf or wrapped around her body as women would wear in my country. Most magazines have a cover line so I decided to conform to that convention and I gave my front cover a cover line to intrigue the reader. 'I’m not that much of a good girl’ the cover line is kind of 'saucy' which may make the readers want the read the magazine and find out more.  However, I changed the layout of my front cover and changed the quote to ‘I always have love for my ‘afro divas’ I felt as though the cover line had to draw the reader’s attention, she’s addressing her fans, therefore the target audience will be drawn in by the image and the cover line, and may well be interested in purchasing the magazine.

the title of a newspaper or magazine at the head of the first or editorial page. The title of my magazine is 'Afro-Mgz'. The title was inspired by the word afrobeat’s and from that word i took out 'Afro', and added MGZ. I did this to not only show that it's based on afrobeat’s but to also show that it's linked to Africa.

I think most aspects of my old front cover is quite similar to most of the afrobeat magazine front covers that I've seen. Many of them are simplistic. Not a lot is going on. I think a few more improvements could be made to my front cover, for example, the arrangement of my sell lines could’ve been adjusted to be in line, therefore when creating my new front cover, I paid attention to the alignment of the sell lines. I also added a much bolder colour. I realised that although many of the afrobeat magazines are simplistic, some were also vibrant. I used dark purple to make the pink writing and the white writing stand out, and also, I wanted the dark yellow African continent to stand out as well. The dark yellow continent was added to represent Africa and to make it clear that this magazine is an afrobeat’s magazine, it’s like a mark.  My contents page compared to my new one is completely different. I’d say I only kept two things the same or similar, and that would be the layout and the article is similar. Both the old magazine and the new one has a pull quote. I used a pull quote because I know that pull quotes, just as well as the main image, are used to draw the reader in. Both images take up one side of the double page spread. My models have been presented as an Afrobeat’s girl group. A lot of the pictures I took were inspired by destiny's child, an old R&B girl group. I chose to take the images as a midshot because I wanted their outfits to show in the image because the costume is paramount.

For my DPS my colour scheme was Grey. initially I even used the colour golden brown for my headline because it linked to the title, but it didn't really work well with my colour scheme therefore I changed the colour to a darker grey. However, after receiving feedback and realising that dull colours don’t represent Africa, I decided to change the colour scheme. I took my new pictures for my DPS outside, I wanted to get many shots of the models in the trees, or standing around the trees to give the magazine a sense of nature and Africa as a whole. I wanted greens, reds, yellows, bright vibrant colours. I finally decided on which picture to use after many trial and errors. I think the picture I chose to use was a very good shot, it was taken as a portrait therefore I didn’t need to stretch the image unlike my old dps where I had to stretch the image to make it fit on the whole page, which made it look unprofessional. A headline's purpose is to quickly and briefly draw attention to the story. My old headline was just the name of the group but I realised that it doesn’t really fit the criteria of a headlines purpose as it didn’t give away anything about the story of the article therefore I changed the headline from ‘The Mahogany Brown Girls’ to ‘Meet the rising superstars’. This headline would tell the readers that they story is about the ‘upcoming’ girl group and may make the reader want to find out something new.

The purpose of a contents page is to give the reader an idea of other stories/ information within the magazine and what page numbers you can find it on. The previous contents page that I made was probably more vibrant than the DPS and the front cover, however it looked unprofessional therefore I had to switch it up in order for it to be as vibrant as my other two new products.

Comparing my current magazine to my previous one, I think that my current magazine fits the genre that I chose more than the previous one did.  Afrobeat’s is mainly about African artists and upcoming new African artists, I decided to use African models for my front cover, DPS, and contents page. i made sure that the magazine as whole represented Africa very well. The costumes played a huge roll in representing Afrobeat’s. I used my own knowledge of my cultural background to help me figure out what costume my models should wear. when there is a traditional/cultural event in Ghana, most people were the traditional clothing which is Kente but sometimes they were Ankara material. Unfortunately, Kente is a very expensive material so i had to use Ankara material (which is just as nice) for the models to wear. Ankara is also worn by many other west African women, this makes it more multicultural and it doesn't give away the country that these models come from. I wanted to incorporate a bit of R&B into my magazine so I used destiny's child as a form of inspiration. I loved the pictures from photoshoot for their album 'Destiny Fulfilled', so i used those pictures to give me and idea on what I would like my pictures to look like. The image of my current dps, was inspired by my previous dps but I prefer the images I took outside, it made my dps look more professional.

For my first DPS, most of the pictures that i took of my models were indoors and a lot of them were medium close ups however for my new one, I wanted to take the pictures outside because I didn’t want the images to look exactly the same, I also wanted natural lighting so that the image could look professional. and I used a DSLR camera for all of my photos. This was done to make my magazine look very professional and also, I wanted my pictures to be clear. I chose to take my pictures this way because I wanted a captivating main image. Close ups tend to draw the readers in therefore I thought it was only right to do so. My model for my front cover is looking directly at the camera, my models in my DPS were also looking into the camera. The effect of this is that it is a form of direct address and it makes the reader feel like they're being addressed by the person in the magazine. Before making my front cover, DPS and contents page, I decided to sketch out the layout to give me an idea of how I’d want the layout to be like. To achieve a precise layout, I used the ruler tool on photoshop to make sure that everything was straight and in line. Overall my music magazine does conform to Afrobeat’s magazine conventions as I used existing afrobeat magazines as inspiration.