Here are a few artists that fall into the R&B genre. I found these results on yougov and they will allow me to understand my target audience and how to make my magazine more appealing to them.

From looking at this I can see my target audience is millennial women, however I do think generation Z, if included on the website would also be very high in the positive rating percentage. Being from gen Z myself, I feel as if a lot of people my age really enjoy R&B music and its soulful and rhythmic tones. So considering this, I believe I can make this Music Magazine similar to my own and many other people my own ages tastes and preferences. So that my audience can decode the front cover of my magazine, I have to encode it to their exact tastes and preferred reading by making it look neat and tidy so that it looks high class but with enough colour and shine to make it look youthful and free.

Looking at the uses and gratification of media I can see that my target audience will go to my magazine for Information and Personal Identity. The young people of this generation often look to the media to make up their identity. For example, Rhianna talking about becoming a successful business woman influences young girls’ personal identity to be more hard working and independent. Also, information such as advice and current issues like the Black Lives Matter movement are very important to many people, so seeing it in a magazine will be refreshing and helpful. The magazine will obviously also be a source of entertainment, providing an aesthetic enjoyment and emotional release to my audience.

This is my dating profile that I have created to give a basic idea of my target audience and what they enjoy. As a producer, it is very important I know and understand the demographics and psychographics of my target audience so that I can produce the best magazine option for them.

This allowed me to understand how to make a front cover of a magazine look appealing to a particular audience and how it represents a particular topic. I now know when making a magazine you have to consider who is your target audience and what the demographics and psychographics are. What is their age, gender, their politics and beliefs? What are their likes and dislikes? What will get their attention? A bright, loud cover suggests that it is for a young audience whereas the sophisticated, sharp cover would imply the magazine is for older people with more classical interests.The technical design conventions like coverlines, mastheads, colours and images are very important when presenting what makes your cover special. I will use all these things when making my own media.

This is an annotated magazine cover that presents all the magazine features that I would need to create in my own version.

• The main cover line is a headline on the cover of the magazine that highlights what is inside.
• The main cover star is usually a large picture of someone on the front cover of the magazine.
• The caption and inset is an added photo and caption that points to what else can be seen in the magazine.
• Cover lines are headlines on the front cover that can be found and read inside the magazine.
• The issue/date,price and bar-code can all be found in a small white box at the bottom that are important for selling and distributing the magazine.
• The masthead is the title of the main magazine and is usually presented larger than the other pieces of writing.
• Plugs are the selling point of the magazine but are made less obvious than the main cover lines.
• The pug is extra pieces of information like prices, logos or promotions.

When creating my own magazine, I need to use all of these to create something that is unique and attractive to an audience and yet still has all the technical design conventions to make it look like a magazine.