Final Pitch

Analysing the interview focus group

Question 1:
Our answers gave us a mixture of preferring to read either a pop or Indie magazine, I think this is due to the target audience concerning ethnicity as we believe our readers would mainly be of colour. We will still be doing R&B as it just reaches just to another side of the age range we studied.

Question 2:
We asked what a reasonable price range for a magazine would be and we got answers from £1.50-£3.99. Averaging this out the ideal price would be around the £2.50, this seems like a realistic selling price.

Question 3:
For the price agreed and averaged, our answers said they would expect to see new information, up and coming artists, a good quality and a good quantity. I think this is highly reasonable and we will take this forward with us to include in our own.

Question 4:
We asked who would be favourable on the front of a magazine concerning gender and we got about an equal vote between male and female, this does depend on the sexuality of the people asked though. Taking this forward, we will use female and males both equally within our magazines.

Question 5:
We asked if we should use attractive models to appeal to our target audience and we got responses of yes as it would draw people in but also not too attractive or slim etc as it can cause a moral panic among the young especially with eating disorders and dangerous measures to look like their idols.

Question 6:
When investigated what stories our target audience would be interested in, we received responses including; a bit of gossip, new information about upcoming artists and just updates in general to do with the music industry.

Question 7:
The most important thing on a magazine to our responders is the main image, for it not to be too bland and to have a good structure. This is so the magazine feels organised and so the reader feels certain with the content.

Question 8:
Our responders said they would be attracted by pull quotes and popular stars on the front of the magazine. We will bare this in mind.

Focus Group Audio

Questions for our focus group

Social Media focus group

Analysing the final questionnaire results

Question 1:
The results show that the average age people think the target audience is for an R&B magazine is 18. This fits into what we thought and so we will proceed with this in mind.
Question 2:
The greyscale and dark colours category was about equal and also preferred in an R&B magazine according to our questionnaire which we also originally thought so we will probably take this forward with us too.
Question 3:
All of our questionnaire fillers said they would prefer a visual looking magazine, proving we need only little text but the images need to play a main role.
Question 4:
Our answers showed us that the majority would prefer to read colloquial language but also a fair amount would like to see just standard language too, this suggests to me that there should be a bit of both and a mixture too so it meets our target audience perfectly.
Question 5:
91% of our answers said they would prefer informal text as opposed to formal- I think this would suit our genre and target audience best too.
Question 6:
Just over 80% of our answer stated that the readers would prefer a sans-serif font, meaning more relaxed font, so this is definitely the font we need to take forward.
Question 7:
91% of our answers back us up with our theory about males being the main audience that R&B magazines appeal to. This proves how we need to construct and consider our images.
Question 8:
It states from our answers that males would want to be seen on the front cover of our magazine mainly, with just over half of the votes but this depends on sexuality of the people asked and therefore I think it is safe to take this forward as a 50/50 split.
Question 9:
Our answers showed us that the majority (69%) would want to see famous stars in a magazine where as about half of that (31%) would want to see new and upcoming stars, this proves that out of the 3 of us in my group- we should have 1 of us showing new and upcoming stars.
Question 10:
This question clearly shows us that having a provocative image on the front of a magazine would definitely appeal to the younger adult more. We will have to take this into consideration when shooting our images.

Results from the final questionnaire

Final Improved Questionnaire

Commenting on the analytic graphs

Question 1:
75% of people taking part in our preliminary questionnaire conformed to the conventions of R&B regarding colour palette. I believe when we send out our final questionnaire, we need to have more answered gathered to get a truer, better result.

Question 2:
Again, 75% of our answers preferred a visual magazine which also conforms to the R&B magazine conventions. A wider set of answers would help get a more accurate set of results.

Question 3:
Slang and abbreviations had an equal 50:50 split to be seen in an R&B magazine, proving our research to be correct.

Question 4:
ALL of our questionnaire fillers believed that seeing a provocative image on the front of a magazine would make it appeal to the younger adult. I believe there would be a slight exception so a wider set of results would expand our knowledge.

Question 5:
ALL of our questionnaire fillers agreed that Sans Serif would be the preferred font, following the R&B magazine conventions.

Question 6:
We did not expect for our answers to come back saying that the female would read an R&B magazine, as we expected males too, considering the provocative images especially concerning women.

Question 7:
According to our results, readers do not mind whether a female or male is on the front of their magazine but I think with more results there would be a definite answer progress.

Question 8:
ALL of our readers said that a good Masthead would draw them in to reading a magazine. This proves we need to consider carefully what this will be.

Question 9:
75% of our questionnaire fillers said our survey was 'good'. As this is not 100%, we need to improve it slightly. As a comment said, "Some questions I felt had more than one answer so being to tick more than one answer would improve on this." although this can not be improved due to the software, we could add a comment box so the answers could be expanded on.

Analysing the pilot questionnare

Pilot Questionnare

Create your own user feedback survey

Audience Profiling Mindmap

Mind Map created by Kyra-Mai Green with GoConqr

Technical Research

Technical Research by Alex Bowles on Scribd

Theoretical Research

Emailing a Professional

Conventions- Oliver

Form Research

Research into R&B

 

Representation of women with R&B

Laura Mulvey’s male gaze theory: women are objectified through the eyes of a heterosexual male.

Janice Winship’s notion of complicity: the female tries to make a version of herself to be enjoyed by men.

David Gauntlette’s empowered female: that women are in charge of themselves and do not use their sexuality or promisciousicity for men.

 Women within the R&B genre are usually presented for men, proving Mulvey’s theory but occasionally as in my textual analysis Winship’s theory is shown or even more rarely as an empowered female which I would like to enforce more in my magazine. It will still fit for the R&B genre because women’s power is ever-growing. Men are represented aggressively and stronger/more powerful than women within R&B magazines, there are many images such as these that follow that show women promiscuously with a man in charge of them.

These are general images from R&B but many like this are used in their magazines.

I will demonstrate my knowledge of this in my magazine by showing clearly the empowered woman theory with tweaks of the male gaze theory to fit into the genre just a little more.

R&B stands for Rhythm and Blues. It is a music genre originated from African-Americans in the 1940's. The term Rhythm and Blues can relate to some forms of rap music, because nowadays the term R&B doesn't relate back to blues, soul and funk. 'Contemporary R&B' is the explanation for the evolution of the genre.

Progress report

After doing my initial research with my group we have discovered the typical iconography features for R&B and found out what we like and don't like about R&B magazines that have been previously done by both professionals and students. We have discovered that the general colour palette is black, white, grey and red and that the font is serif done simply and spread apart. These ideas we would like to take forward I think with maybe the odd exception and we would also like to take forward the ideas from images and how women are presented when taking in consideration photography for our work. The ideas for hitting our target audience that I have gathered from analysis are abbreviations and short simple words to appeal to the elder adolescents. Looking at other people's work has inspired and excited me to get cracking on my own.

Alex's analysis of student work- double page spread