Front covers
From my analysis of music magazine front covers, I have learnt about the different factors that make a magazine cover a success.
When evaluating the different covers I thought about the masthead and how important that was to the whole cover. When the orientation of the masthead was behind the main image that meant that the magazine is well established and do not need the whole name to be shown for it to be recognised by their readers. For example, for big well known magazine Rolling Stone you can hardly see the masthead, but with the few words you can see you can see that the signature style is that Rolling Stone. In contrast new and unrecognised magazine Clash needed the whole name being displayed for the readers to know what magazine they are picking up or buying.
The image itself brings the up most of importance when creating a magazine cover because if a potential reader does not like a particular cover that could make them not want to buy the magazine. From looking at the different cover images I think it is important that it includes a music star so that the reader can see someone they like on the cover making them buy it more. However, if I were to design a new music magazine then an unknown musician would work better, because that would benefit the person and the reader. It is also important that the picture appeals to both men and women and to a wide age range. To do this I may need to find a picture with both men and women on, this has not been apparent for any of the magazine front covers that I have analysed, so maybe it is time for a music cover that includes both male and females. It is also a good thing for a cover image to stand out, the Vibe cover of Ciara, for example, is very daring and controversial and got a lot of attention.
I think the type of font used is also important because if it is too small it would not be noticeable if seen from a newsstand.
Contents Pages
From analysing contents pages of music magazines, I have learnt that it is important for it to be functional. By this I mean that it needs to be easy to read and for the readers to be able to find the page they want to read.
I think that it is important for the page to not be cluttered so that the list of contents is clear to be seen and the images on the page do not distract the reader from looking at the contents.
Almost universally the contents pages all had white or grey backgrounds, making the main focus either the list of contents or the images on the page, this is what I will do for my own contents page.
It is key that the word contents is used somewhere on the page, because in the analysis I made Rolling Stone’s contents page did not use that word, and it did not look like a contents page, risking the reader just skipping past the page.
When designing my own contents page, I think I will take the most inspiration from Q magazine, because it mixed both a large image with organised list of contents.
Double Page Spreads
From analysing double page spreads in music magazine I have learnt that it is imperative to have a large image of the main star. For most of the music magazines that I looked at they all had the image dominated the whole double page spread. Rolling Stone magazine had nearly no words in the spread meaning that the image was the most important. Other magazines like Blender included both a large image and words, half and half. This gives a good balance and is probably what I would like to do for my own spread.
The images used are all of musicians which is very important to a music magazine, having a big title of the name of the artist is a ‘double whammy’ meaning that if the reader did not recognise the image of the musicians then they may recognise their name, and vice versa.
It could also be good to have a colour scheme, like in the issue of NME magazine so that the two pages may flow better together.
Audience Research
I have decided that my target audience is people of both genders aged between 16 and 24. This is because they are the age group I can relate mostly to. From my audience research, the questionnaire and the Find my Tribe quiz I have found a number of things.
From the questionnaire I found that Indie music was the most popular music genre choice. This helped me with my decision of which genre the magazine should be. I also found that the majority do not read music magazines, this could be something to consider when making my own magazine. If the target audience would be smaller than I had originally planned. I noticed that the bands/artists they wanted to see on the cover, related highly on their preferred genre of music. The majority of the audience also said that the promotion that would most likely to persuade them to buy the magazine is Free Gig Tickets. This is the most desired freebie, so I will take that into account when creating my own magazine.
From the Find my Tribe quiz I have learnt that the important factors that makes us fit into a 'tribe' is what entertainment we enjoy most, from TV to radio to magazines, it all matters. This is something that may help me in creating my magazine, knowing what entertainment feature my target audience may enjoy most.
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