Contents page finished

Front cover finished

Feature Article Analysis 2

Feature Article Analysis 1

Content Page Analysis 2

Contents page analysis

Front Cover Analysis 3

 

The age rating for this magazine is directed more towards a male audience of 20-45 years. The reasoning for this is because of the masculine feel this cover holds, the two men locking eyes onto each other gives a sense of tension that you rarely find with other magazines therefore you engage more because you wonder what the reasoning for this tension.

This magazine (Rolling Stone) uses only three different colours White Red and Black to give a simplistic style but still standing out to give enough effect. In addition to this, the font style looks very professional to add to the high status of this magazine and to put emphasis on the story lines such as ‘SHOWDOWN!’. The magazine article has decided to make this bold to both add emphasis to the story line and to fill up more of the magazine space.

The masthead on this magazine is written across the page at the top, this magazine differs to others because it does not have the title right at the top of the magazine before the stories are introduced instead we are given an insight into what the magazine is offering before we actually know what magazine it is! This masthead also has part of it covered by an article in the magazine but because of how well known the magazine is they are able to get away with it. A reason for them doing a risk such as covering up part of the masthead is the tradition of the title, almost every cover features the same title in the same font, size, colour etc. and therefore when people come across a different issue such as this they are still able to pick up on what magazine it is.

Front Cover Anlalysis 2

The magazine ‘Hello!’ features supermodel Coleen Rooney, The masthead is in big bold writing with a red background on the title to add emphasis to what magazine it is, this therefore makes the customer aware of what magazine it is because of the bold yet recognizable print. This magazine only features one image on the front but it covers the whole page, the text is then written on top of the image to give the natural feel of the magazine and to show her surroundings. The font on this magazine is very bold and big to add emphasis to the story lines and to make sure its very eye catching to the audience.

The camera angle of this image is a medium shot to show direct looking at the customer, this engages the reader because we feel like it’s a personal conversation happening. This magazine uses a pull quote to give an insight into what her topic of conversation is going to be about. The quote makes us want to read more into it because we ask ourselves what she has so much to be thankful for. The main cover lines colour also makes it flow very naturally due to it being written over the image.

The main story line is also entitled to be a ‘World Exclusive’ which makes the reader feel they should read about it if the issue is deemed to be that big. This captures the audience because it places emphasis on the importance of this article and with the story being in a well-respected magazine such as Hello! It is definitely worth reading. The way the magazine is laid out represents that it is a magazine of gossip and revealing the truth about people’s lives rather than things such as music or films. This is shown through the simplistic style of the magazine and aside from the obvious there being no music of film titles the lack of reviews, often there would be a review on the front cover of a film magazine giving it either a personal opinion or rating of stars.

The target audience for this magazine is definitely based towards a female audience, this is shown through the image because it portrays most women’s desire to look like and to aspire too. The age range for this audience I would imagine to be based between 25-50 years.

Front Cover Anlalysis 1

In this image we see a duo called ‘The Last Shadow Puppets ‘ standing back to back facing into the camera, Their faces are rather neutral and they are both wearing identical black coats. Both of the pair is staring into the camera lens which subsequently means they’re staring at you  making a more persuasive technique into you buying the magazine.

The magazine only use 4 colours in their magazine, However the red is dominating most of the magazine which makes it pleasurable to the eye and still represents the manufacturer of the magazine ‘NME’. The red and black writing for each sub heading highlights the persuasion to buy this magazine as the stories that are in it are deemed to be well worth a read.  Also the title of the band is highlighted in red and made boldly to make sure people are focusing on the main subject.

The target audience for this magazine is based mainly for people who like the Alternative/Indie genres there for youths and young adults (16-24 year olds). The masthead on this magazine is slightly covered but due to the magazine already being well known they are able to get away with doing things such as this, covering the masthead slightly also highlights the main band being shown and sort of builds their high status and showing that this really is something worth buying.

The image of the band duo is a medium shot and therefore takes up most of the front cover. Both names are written in white contrasting the black coats that each are wearing to add emphasis to the band title. The magazine also features a quote at the bottom of the magazine from one of the duo Alex Turner; this attracts us personally to the magazine because it makes us show interest in the gossip going on between bands.

This magazine only features one image to again place emphasis on the main story line and not to distract our attentions from the main issue this magazine has to offer. And the fonts are very big and bold to add emphasis to the stories.

 

Media Evaluation

Media Evaluation

 

1. My music magazine has many comparisons to other magazines in terms of amount of images used, fonts and positioning of these images, titles, quotes etc.. However with all these comparisons there are also many different things used in my magazine cover compared to other music magazines such as NME and MOJO. Firstly, I will be looking at the differences my magazine has in comparison to others.. If we look at the masthead of my title we see a burberry style pattern with black writing on top of this too contrast. This is different from other magazines such as NME who focus there titles simply on colours and bold fonts to make it stand out and to play it “safe” in terms of risk within the industry. The reason that I took this risk and used a pattern for a background is to add to the unique image my magazine is trying to create which will hopefully encourage readers to purchase because in my opinion my whole magazine is based upon unique articles. Another difference of my magazine is that I only use one main image on my magazine in comparison to other music magazines such as Kerrang and NME who often feature multiple images to attract their audience and to make the front cover as filled as possible. The reason why I chose to only feature one image on my front cover was to make it look proffessional and not to offputting by the amount of information on it but also to focus the main article which is upcoming artist jorge. If I had featured multiple images on the front cover then I may of faced the risk of people not seeing what I want them to read which is my feature article but instead focusing there attention on something else of less importance. Now I will make a few comparisons of my magazine compared to other magazines. Firstly, we see on my magazine there are subheadings at the side to show the reader all the other articles and blogs they can view within the magazine, this can be compared to every magazine published and not just music magazines because it is almost essential that a magazine can try and give a rough insight to stories within the magazine otherwise they may face the risk of the viewer not being interested and not buying. Another comparison I can make with my magazine to others is my colour scheme. Most magazines will only feature a maxiumum of 4 different colours so it doesn’t look too outrageous in terms of appearance and therefore people are more attracted to it. The colours I have featured on my magazine are Black, White, Brown and Red. This hopefully makes my magazine more appealing to a reader because the neutra olours used hopefully are enough to be eye catching to the reader but also to make it subtle.

 

2. I have represented the particular group I feel would be interested in which is teenage boys and girls and young adults who are particularly keen on rap music but also indie style in a number of ways. Firstly, My choice of burberry pattern featured on the front cover, the contents page and the feature article would be particularly targeted at the indie style because it is eye catching and the pattern is something which indie people are very keen on. My style of writing on the feature article text isn’t very formal which relates to my teenage audience because a teenage audience are not going to want to read an article which uses very formal language and discusses very mature issues because that wouldn’t appeal to the audience I want to read my magazine. By using this style of text I can in a way relate to the audience because it talks about an upcoming artist with a passion for music, partying and drinking alcohol which relates to almost every teenage indie and rap loving boy and girl out there. However, with this I have also challenged the stereotypical view of a teenage boy and girl who is into rap music for the style of the magazine, the style of the magazine does admittedly appeal more to an indie audience but I feel that this colourway and more importantly the image on the front cover people can look at the cover and realise that my magazine is trying to appeal to a wide range of teenage audiences and therefore will be intrigued as to how I have managed to do this. If I could change on thing about the magazine I would try and feature more fashion towards the indie style of young teenagers becayse I feel this is a huge part of teenage culture the clothes they wear and by putting this into my magazine I feel I would get a lot more viewers.

 

3. In my opinion looking at my magazine in terms of style, target audience, and music I feel that Bauer would be the best choice of publisher to go with. I have come up with many reason for the choice. Firstly, IPC publishes major music magazine NME which is very compatible with my magazine in terms of the style of magazine and the articles featured within its magazine. The magazine nme looks at the indie culture if teenagers and young adults therefore I don’t think IPC would be interested in publishing my magazine when they already have an existing product which is already very successful. Secondly, Bauer are one of the biggest publishers in the world and I feel my magazine is a niche which they haven’t researched into yet. I feel that with my magazine they would broaden there market even more and therefore could further both sales and popularity through the use of my magazine because it then shows that they cater for almost every genre of music. Finally, I feel is Bauer were to publish my magazine I would be targeting a huge target audience which Bauer have not yet covered, Bauer publish a very mainstream styles of magazines which does bring in huge sales from the fact that the mainstream population is very high but at the same time they could be gaining much more sales from attracting parts of the scene that aren’t being looked at. If my magazine was to be published they would be identifying that part of the niche which has not been looked at and could take full advantage of that to gain more popularity.

 

4-

This is an image of the sterotypical person I would imagine would be interested in my magazine, the indie style does seem to be attracted to my magazine because of the colours used, the music it is featuring within the magazine and the style of text. I think the burberry pattern used in the magazine is something which could attract a more male audience becaause it is something which males find very nice but also could attract females because burberry is becoming more and more fashionable. I would imagine most of my readers will still be in college and not have things such as a full time job so they have more time to enjoy downloading music and partying which the magazine is discussing.

5- trying to ttract my audience was something I had to think a lot about and by using the research I had made about existing magazines I was able to do this. Firstly I looked at where it is my magazine would be seen and sold and typically my magazine would be featured on a shelf in thing such as supermarkets because that is where a big part of the market is seen on shelfs in supermarkets because that is where most magazines can be found. From this I then thought of the range of colours and patterns I could use to attract a teenagers eye and that is where I came up with the idea of using a burberry pattern because it is very eye atching and can also appeal to a teenager because the fashion of the burberry is a big part that a teenager would be interested in. Another thing I looked into was the main image I could use on my magazine to engage the reader even more, through researching the existing products in the market I was able to see that most images on other magazines do not feature eye contact, therefore by putting an image on my magazine which uses eye contact to the viewer it engages more of anaudience and they feel intrigued as to how serious the magazine itself is about there articles and the articles featured how interesting they are. I feel that if my magazine was to be published I would receive advertisement offers from many fashion labels because it is obvious that fahion is a big part of the indie culture therefore by doing a partnership with some fashion labels I can appeal to more of an audience.

 

 

6-      

 

 

 

 

 

 

These ar some esites which elped me toconstruct my products. Photoshop wasthe biggest part of the construction because I was able to marge it all together use special effects to make my piece look as proffessional as I could. Also, I ued instagram to edit my pictures and give them special effects to make tgem stand out more.

These are some websites which helped me to construct my products. Photoshop was the biggest part of the construction because I was able to marge it all together use special effects to make my piece look as proffessional as I could. Also, I used instagram to edit my pictures and give them special effects to make tgem stand out more.

 

7-  Looking back at my draft and looking through the processes I went through from roughly doing a draft of the features I want on my magazine to then creating the final product I realise I changed a lot of things due to the skills I learned whilst using photoshop and other things. Firstly, Looking at the layout of my front cover draft I kept it very smiliar to my final piece because it was simple yet effective in terms of having an eye catching front over. But, the draft layout is very amateur and doesn’t follow any sort of pattern or colour cheme which therefore makes it unappealing to the reader beccause people want to read a magazine which looks interesting not just what the magazine actually has in it. Without a good layout, colour scheme and font no one would be able to appreciate the articles written because very little people would make it past the step of picking the magazine up because they wouldn’t be interested. However with this similarity I also saw many changes I had made to my magazine for example the images and fonts used in the draft make it look very unclean and unproffessional. Where as my final magazine looks much smarter and through the use of the patterning and space I was able to make of my magazine because of the skills I had made from the weeks I had to get used to using photoshop I was able to make it more eye catching to the reader and more of a proffessional appearance. Furthermore, In my final magazine I have used a number of techniques such as angles lighting, expressions and postures. This makes the images featured in the magazine to look more interesting and to engage more with the reader. One thing I had to consider in particular with my magazine was fonts to use, without having a bold interesting font I wouldn’t be able to make it eye catching to a viewer. Finally, the final stage I had to do in this process was to do proper target audience research, not only did I do a questionnaire I also had to look into the types of people that read the magazines I wanted to be similar too which was NME and Kerrang, doing this helped me realise the special features I could use to make it more eye catching to the audience that would be interested, without doing this I wouldn’t of taken a risk such as doing burberry background unless I had a good idea that my audience would be interested. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

NME music magazine case study

NME: Case Study

History: Originally known as the New Musical Express, NME is a music publication based in the United Kingdom publishing weekly since March 1952. It started as a music newspaper then gradually moved more towards being known as a music magazine during the 1980’s. NME was the first British newspaper to feature a singles chart in its magazine and in the 1970’s became the bestselling British music magazine. During the period of 1072 to 1976 NME was particularly associated with ‘Gonzo Journalism’ then became more associated with punk rock due to the writing of the magazine from Tony Parsons and Julie Burchill. In 1996 an online version of NME ‘NME.com’ was launched and it is now the biggest music site with over 7 million users per month.

How it has developed: During the 1960’s was when NME was first seen in the newspaper world, the paper was edited by Andy Gray and frequently features bands such as The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. These artists were also seen at the NME Poll Winners Concert where famous artists would win awards based on the popularity they were getting from the magazine. Then in the 1970’s NME had strong competition from the ‘Melody Maker’ because NME struggled to keep pace with the development of Psychedelia and Rock particularly. In 1972 the magazine nearly faced closure from its editors IPC, Alan Smith was made editor and was given a short period of time by IPC to turn things around quickly or face closure. As a result the paper's coverage changed quickly from an uncritical and rather reverential showbiz-oriented paper to something intended to be smarter, hipper, more cynical and funnier than any mainstream British music paper had previously been. This then gained the magazine’s reputation back to its original setting and continued this reputation further on into the 1980’s. The 80’s saw a first ever magazine featuring cassette tape issued in 1981 to users who ordered it at a cheap price. From March 1998 onwards the magazine was no longer printed on newsprint and was shifted to tabloid size full glossy colour covers. Then in May 2008 the magazine was given a redesign aimed at an older generation to give it more of an authoritive tone to attract more customers.

How is uses technology: Over the years NME has developed its technology to give people the most opportuinity to be able to read and discuss with others via the internet. Now, we see that NME has a Facebook, Twitter, Myspace and many other accounts where fans of the magazine can write to NME contributing to articles they would like to be seen in it and to generally give feedback on the publishers to see whether they enjoy it or not. NME has adapted so much that it even has an app which you can use on your mobile which is an online reader so you can read NME without having to buy a paper copy! This benefits NME because as long as the internet permits a person is able to read NME both anywhere in the world and for places where NME is not sold. NME’s huge adaptation to this can be seen as a way to give them a niche market advantage in the sense that not many other magazines might not use apps on phones and people will therefore change there regular reading to NME because it has that advantage which others may not have.

Details of Location, Props and Models

For my images I used very natural environments in terms of location, for example my front cover and contents page image was used in a college hallway to give off a sense of youth from the artist himself but also to show his modesty to fame and how he doesn't need extravagant things around him. Regarding props there were none used apart from a Jack Daniels and Coca Cola can on the feature article where we see the artist Jorge when he was younger again shows a sense off youth but also shows how he isn't all good like many artists are made out to be and he is just like every other teenager who likes to go out, drink alcohol and have a good time. The models used was only himself for the front cover and contents page but then on the feature article one of his friends is used to give a natural setting rather than an obvious interview setting. 

Information on magazine publishers

The biggest publishers in the music magazines are; Bauer, IPC, Dennis, Natmags and Conde Naste. All of them combined dominate roughly 90% of the music industry.

The music magazines that they each produce are;
Bauer produce- Kerrang!, Mojo and Q.

Conde Nast- Do not produce any music magazines.

IPC produce- NME and Uncut.

NatMags- Do not publish any music magazines.

Conde Nast- Do not produce any music magazines.

Dennis- Do not publish any music magazines.

Looking at this research we can see that IPC produce the music magazine NME which is by far one of the most popular magazines in the world. However also looking at this research we can see that NatMags, Conde Nast and Dennis do not produce and music magazines.

There are currently 22 music magazines in the uk. The main target audience for these music magazines are teenagers but there are some such as mojo which target an older generation.

Target Audience Mood Board

As you can see this mood board is too figure out what kind of target audience I will be getting, to do this I had to look into the stereotype of people who listen to hip hop music and that generally came down to chavs and people who like grime, using these images has helped me to figure out what it is I need to have a successful magazine and what I need to do to attract the right audience.

 

Colours Mood Board

This mood board looks at the different sorts of colours I could use for my finishing products. Looking at a wide range of colours I have come to the conclusion that actually using a colour that stands out more than black is very off-putting and most magazines will never do that because of the major risk involved. Using other colours can be seen as quite childish so people can automatically be put off something like that if it is too vibrant. This is why I have come to the decision that black will be the primary font colour I will be using but at the same time I may use a different colour to trim around the outside of the font to give it that unique touch.

 

Fonts Mood Board

This fonts mood board has finalised my descision to keep my fionished products very basic, using a font which is very unque is good because it stands out more but at the same time it can look too overdone and people cant be put off a product just by the way it looks. Also, some of the fonts selected on this moos board strike me to be ones for a very rock/indie band where as the hip hop style genre I want for my magazine has to be bold but basic so it stands out and people are more intrigued to read.