A note to the examiner:

Dear examiner,
I hope you enjoy reading my work and seeing my progress from the start of the coursework to my final product. I have learnt a lot throughout this process, about many aspects of media forms. I believe that my ideas have developed and become more sophisticated as I have gone through the process and the changes and alterations that I made throughout have helped me to produce an end product that i am satisfied with. I hope you can recognize my hard work and progression from start to end.

Final Product

Preliminary Task

Analysis, evaluation and general comments on my front cover

Note: There is three variations of my front cover in which I have handed in to my teacher for marking. This is only one.

I am happy with the design of my front cover and think it looks clean cut, neat and professional, which is the style i was aiming for. I have tried to keep it relatively simple and minimalist. I think that the image is eye catching and the colours in the image stand out above the white background. I learnt during looking at some photography in my research of the importance of an image, especially on the front cover of a magazine or product. I copied the style conventions of clash magazine but added elements and ideas of my own in as well based around my ideas and the way that the image and text fit around each other.

Analysis, evaluation and general comments on my double page spread

I was happy with my double page spread and believe that this was probably the page that saw the most improvements from the original draft. Again, I tried to combine a mixture of features that would be representative of contemporary R&B style and PBR&B style. I did this by keeping the page design like those I had analysed in vibe magazine. For example, one of my main style models when looking at this page was the Bruno Mars page. I tried to copy this kind of style, however adapted it slightly to give a slightly more alternate R&B look to the page. I think that the effects used on my image are effective and i tried to combine a selection of styles from R&B and PBR&B to dress my artist for this page. I kept the style of the page quite simplistic and minimalist which was the general feel that I was hoping for and that I believe I achieved throughout the magazine. If i had the chance to make another draft of this i probably would have made a few alterations, such as the placing and positioning of the branding ('fusion') and the page numbers, to ensure that these did not clash with any other parts of the text on the page. 

Analysis, evaluation and general comments on my final contents page

Above is my final contents page. I am happy with this part of the product but probably less so than my front cover and my double page spread. I understand that this differs quite significantly from the contents that i produced in my first draft, however I believe i can justify these changes. For starters, i would like to mention again how as my research developed i found a new sub genre of R&B that particularly interested me and which i adapted some of my work to allow this sub genre to fit in. This was PBR&B and looked at less contemporary R&B styles that infused other genres such as alternative, and hip hop. I believe that the way i adapted my contents page from the first draft was more inclusive of this sub genre, for example, the image located on the right hand side of the page includes two artists who wear styles more typical of the alternative/indie genre. Where as my main cover star, Aliyah Mae, on the left hand side of the page appears to be more of a contemporary R&B star. I tried to use a combination of the two to create a balance on this page. I believe that as an improvement, if i had the chance to do this again or make another draft, i would've perhaps taken a few more photos of a better quality and where i had more time to put to use the photography skills that i had researched. However my contents page fits into the style that i have aimed for all along, which was a neat, clean cut style, with the main use of a black and white colour scheme. This is what i looked for in most of my style models that I analysed also.

General Comments about the progression of my work

At the start of this project i wished to produce a contemporary  R&B music magazine. However as i went through the process and did more research i discovered the sub genre of PBR&B. This particularly interested me and was an idea that i had in mind, that i had found had actually been classified into a specific sub genre of R&B. This gave me more scope and room to challenge conventions and take features and aspects from a few different genres to produce my final product.  I was glad that my research allowed me to find this as it let me produce something a bit different and unique from already, pre-existing R&B music magazines. As a result of all this the style i was going for changed quite drastically throughout the process, and this can be seen especially by comparing my first draft product and my final product. I believe my first draft product follows a style which is more typical of the conventional R&B style, however my final product is more representative of the PBR&B sub genre i wished to include and of the genre and general intentions i had for my magazine which was to be predominantly an R&B magazine, however with other genres intertwined to create something a bit different.