1. For my coursework I created an R&B magazine called ‘Pure R&B’. I chose this name because it’s simple and to the point, you know exactly what the magazine entails and it’s very true to the genre of R&B. When studying R&B magazines I noticed a few things that all of them have in common. There’s usually a black girl on the front being portrayed as a sex symbol, which is due to the fact that this music genre originated in black countries. There is a lot of gold and black and the titles are usually in block lettering. They have quite a classy, expensive appearance and usually have a colour scheme that is not purely aimed at men or women.

I have followed the conventions of these magazines so that my audience understand it. The name of my magazine ‘Pure R&B’ is not dissimilar to ‘Hip Hop Soul’ and the font is bold and gold, also the image of the front of my magazine is could easily be found on the front of Bleeder, VIBE, FHM or Hip Hop Soul.
My front cover is fairly simple. I have the photo on the front stretched across the whole page as I noticed that a lot of R&B magazines did this, along with the bold, gold solid masthead. I used the date and email address as a strapline underneath the masthead in a smaller font and right-justified. I included left and right justified cover lines, but most of them I put on the left because they will be visible when they are organised on a shelf in a shop. I used a “Ria Ritchie – our R&B queen revealed!” as my main cover line, and this is placed at the bottom left hand corner of the magazine, in my research I found that it was common to have the main cover line near the bottom of the page. .
On the double-page spread the layout is very simple and tidy. The photo spreads over two pages although the subject is on the left page. The photo of the girl is a very close-up shot, this makes the interview feel a lot more intimate for the reader. The text is on the right hand page and consists of three left-justified columns. I have used fairly big gutters so that the text doesn’t look cramped together and messy. I used a drop-cap at the start of the text because it looks neat and professional, which was the look I was going for.
With the contents page, again, the photo fills the whole page. All of the next is left-justified and the text is white, which stands out on the dark purple and black background. The girl in the photo is more on the right hand side of the page, which I did deliberately so that there was space on the left to write my contents. I used quite small, delicate lettering for my contents page because is it is a little more detailed than the front cover. The text under the heading is all lower-case lettering, this makes the text look more tidy and dainty, which gives a look of sophistication. On the bottom right hand side of the page I used three pictures which indicate some of the other people featured in the magazine.