What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

My first photoshoot for the magazine proved to be sucessful after the chance to practice and experiments with the settings on my camera. By the end of the shoot I learnt more and more about how i liked working with my camera and decided that I prefered to use manual settings when photographing. Although on all of my pictures I wanted a quick shutterspeed, I had the early darkening of the evening against me. I was worried about choosing a slower shutter speed but in the end my photo's worked out okay, and i was happy with the ones I managed to get. It was good to be able to experiement with the focus and depth of field however in most of the photo's I used the whole picture was in focus due to the posistions of my models and wanting them both to be seen.

Although I had some experience using photoshop, I was able to experiment with different fonts aswell as experimenting with colour and editing my photo's. Due to the light and the quality of my photo's most of them i had to sharpen, but i thought they looked good for the magazine.

How did you attract/address your audience?

To address my audience, I used the language you would most frequently hear from a normal group of the target audience. By using words such as ‘ya’ instead of you connects to the audience in a way in which they will understand and feel comfortable with. Although the language used has some form of ‘politeness’ and formality using swear words in this type of genre isn’t used as a taboo term, or used to shock people as this would be comfortable to the audience. People would want to buy the magazine, because it would be the most frequent music magazine of the genre. They would want to be associated with it, as it will contain all of their interests and they can get all what they expect in one magazine issue.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

Stereotypically the audience of my magazine, would be people who appreciate the hip-hop and rnb genre's. The audience stereotypically would be people who wear or are in to street fashion, and well known brands such as 'Nike'and 'Adidas'. Normal shopping habits would possiblt be to by flat peak caps, sneakers such as High Tops, baseball jackets, headphones, music phones and ipods. The target audience of my magazine i would think to be quite a young age. Approx. around ages 14-24. Adverts in my magazine would be around the ideas of the audience, such as films relating to the music genre such as 'Life and Lyrics', '4321' and 'Stomp the Yard '. Each of these films are based around typical charactoristics of the genre audience, each showing topics of performance, rapping, street dance and breakdance, all topics you would expect the target audience to enjoy. Other adverts that may be included in the magazine would be deodrants, clothing brands, upcoming music, local events etc.

Original Photos.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

As in a music magazine such as 'Vibe' many photographers and models use the 'over the shoulder' pose. Lighting mostly always comes from the right hand side, highlighting the face and outfit choice, as reflected in my chosen picture. I didn't make my model smile as a more agressive 'down' look would appeal more to my chosen audience; people who necessarily won't be smiling all the time. Although i haven't used an urban environment, the model, the clothes and her expression, create the 'urban' theme and also realte to the 'hip-hop' genre. I didn't chose to use an urban environment as i though it would be interest to take the charactor out of their normal confort zone. By putting them in a more natural environment I could achieve this. In the press this picture would probably come across negative, but in this case, realting the charactor\artist to the target audience make the picture more positive and more stereotypical of the magazine. In this case as my charactors are new to be known artist they are not modeling any type of clothing brand, as they wouldn't be 'big' enough yet. However in magazine such as vibes companys such as 'Nike' or 'Adidas' may use artists to represent their brand by modeling there clothes.

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

A stereotypical magazine, firstly, would have the magazine title/name to the top of the page, so this is what I have included in my own magazine ‘BOOMBOX’. On a normal magazine, thinking about colour, they would normally use two colours that compliment each other, or two colours that would stand out amongst another. In example with a dark background, you would use a colour such as white, or yellow, or a paler shade of a colour. In my magazine, I had a light background, although I had used a black font colour for the magazine name, I highlighted it with a white strip to make it stand out against the image. Also you would find the same pattern on smaller text on the image, so as on my own magazine cover on the lighter side of the image I used a black text and on the dark parts of the image I used white text.