Research Into Forms and Conventions

The music genre I have chosen to study and replicate a magazine for is 'Classical Music', I think there are many types of magazine that can come out of this genre and by choosing this, feel I have widened my area of research. I am going to look at a few magazines from the genre and analyse the designs, taking ideas for my own design I will be creating shortly.

The first magazine is simply titled, 'Listen', this connotes a simplistic style of music associated with this lifestyle where the music comes first, it is there to be listened to and that is what the readers will do. 
The design is very plain in black and white with the only colour coming from the Masthead, which is in a thin yellow font, as well as the thin information bar on the left hand side, which is also coloured yellow. This style of design is connoting simplicity once again and let's the audience focus solely on the main sell. 


The black and white design is connoting a more 'old fashioned' approach to classical music as opposed to the new, younger audience focus that is being pushed by the media to create more revenue from wider audience sales. 
The cover only has 4 coverlines and straplines which is relatively few in number compared to other magazines in this genre, this tells us that these articles are going to be very detailed and informative to fill a magazine. This also focuses our attention on the main sell once again and carries the air of simplicity further throughout the design.


The main icon is a picture of a rather grand looking man sat in a full suit, smoking a cigar with his legs crossed. The room he is sat in has a window looking into an adjacent room with a grand piano in the centre. Smoking a cigar connotes that he is a high class gentleman, the suit and way he is sat (legs crossed) promotes this idea of a high class member of society. The piano in the background clearly gives the reader the impression that this man is the owner/player of the piano. This icon plays up to the traditional way of thinking about classical music, that is is the music for the higher classes and not for working class people. Working class public would not have worn suits or sat smoking a cigar, sat in this way.


I like the simplistic design of this magazine and will hopefully be taking a similar approach to my magazine. I will not, however, be portraying classical music in this fashion, I do not believe it is only the music for higher classes so will be trying to create a wider audience profile when designing my own front cover.

This magazine is named 'Music' and is a BBC magazine. The very broad title suggests that the magazine is not fully directed on classical music but upon reading the coverlines and straplines it is clear to the reader that classical music is the agenda targeted by the BBC in this magazine. The main image of a man wearing a tuxedo with a conductors baton posing in an animated fashion also connotes that he is standing in front of a full orchestra which is commonly associated to classical music. 


The colour scheme is quite plain and mainly black and white, this connotes sophistication and a 'no-frills' approach to the music. The black and white theme also says something about the age group they are trying to get the attention of, if they were trying to integrate a much younger age group into classical music they would have made the front very flamboyant and attractive to look at with many different colours, by not doing this they have sent a message to an older age group connoting that the type of person who would read this magazine doesn't need to have bright colours all over the page to be able to read it. This also connotes an expected higher average intelligence of reader, making the magazine more exclusive and aimed at a higher class in society.



This magazine has more coverlines and straplines than the one above, I like the idea of keeping a level of sophistication with a simple colour scheme whilst also having a lot of content information shown to the reader. I think perhaps the magazine above looks slightly too bland and would not attract enough readers to be successful. Both the magazines have a very simple colour scheme in common and I think I will use this feature to create a sophisticated look but will be using more coverlines than 'Listen', probably about the same amount as 'Music' have used.

Initial Analysis of a range of Music Magazines...

In this entry I will be analysing a few magazine front covers that I have found on the internet that attracted my attention. These magazines are ranging through different musical genre's, mostly of which I am not familiar with.

The first magazine front cover I looked at was this one from 'Classic Rock' magazine. The target audience for this magazine would be a Traditionalist, Hedonist/Post-Modernist Male/Female aged 28-60 with also a small focus on the younger music fans beginning to listen to classic rock and would fit in any category of the Jicnar scale. The magazine is about Classic Rock, as the title tells us, and focuses on the style of Rock music that was most prevalent during the 1970's - late 1980's, the magazine also publishes articles from newly produced bands who have the same mindset and style as the older and more achieved bands.

The front cover has a masthead in a thick, white, upper-case, Serif font with stars either side of the 'Classic' sign, a main image of two 'AC/DC' band members in black and white, there are four coverlines down the right hand side of the page and a freebie CD covering about a third of the page.

The Masthead being in upper-case, serif font connotes dominance and simplicity so it is not to detract from the music. The serif font with stars either side of 'Classic' could be connoting that classic rock fans are important and worth an almost prestigious or exclusive title, this is also a parody of a set list for a gig. The colour choice of white with no outline connotes that classic rock is a pure form of rock and is a respectable music genre. The main icon being in black and white connotes a classic and vintage style of magazine. The four coverlines are promoting the material and articles inside the magazine. They are all very famous classic rock bands/performers e.g. Van Halen, Slash etc. This connotes that the magazine is of good quality and has the reputation and funds to include four famous performers in just one issue of 'Classic Rock' magazine. The 'freebie' CD is in a substantial, full bodied CD case rather than a small CD sleeve and is of the '15 High-Voltage New Bands', this also connotes that the magazine is of a high quality and has an extensive knowledge of the genre of music they portray, excercising this knowledge by creating a compilation of the best new bands in that genre.

I think that this magazine has a very large focus on quality and conveys the idea that the audience is paying for a great deal of information and entertainment when buying the magazine. The amount of high profile artists that are included on the front cover is a good example of the high quality image that the magazine attempts to portray. 

The next magazine I am looking at is this front cover from 'Classical Music' magazine. The target audience for this magazine are aspirers, achievers and succeeder traditionalists in the A and B section of the Jicnar scale. The gender would be female or male and from an age group of 35-70. The subject of the magazine is classical music as, once again, the title tells us. The focus of the magazine is to report the news from all areas of the classical music profession and make it available to the masses.

The front cover has a white masthead, the font used for 'Classical' is a thin, curved, serif font without an outline. The font used for 'Music' is a straight, thin, serif font, also without an outline. The main icon is a respectable looking man wearing a suit, shirt and no tie, sat on a wooden bench in front of a plain brick wall. He is sat with his legs crossed looking off screen at something to his right hand side. At the top right hand side of the front cover there is a small 'reversed out' coverline, this is promoting an article inside the magazine and is written in a white, rounded font with a red background.
The serif, curved font used for 'Classical', in the masthead, connotes a level of sophistication and a feeling of high class that is related to this genre of music. The serif, straight font used for 'Music' in the masthead connotes a level on simplicity in the magazine as well, showing that the music genre itself is complex and sophisticated, but the magazine is simply about the music without any distractions. The main icon connotes that the magazine is tailored for the middle-upper class citizens who would wear a suit and shirt as leisure wear, once again promoting the idea that the music is for sophisticated and educated people to listen to and enjoy. This icon is playing with the old fashioned belief that individuals involved in classical music are always wearing a tuxedo and looking stern, and changing this into a slang version of a man sat, open collared in a leisure suit, smiling with his head over to one side. The reversed out coverline connotes that the magazine has a lighter side as it is a slightly comedic feature. The rounded white sans serif font creates the idea that the magazine is friendly and on the same level as the audience, creating a better customer - seller relationship. 

I think that this magazine has focused mainly on creating a sophisticated and intelligent feel to the content, this leads to a certain psychographic/demographic audience who would stereotypically be associated with listening to classical music and being interested in the news that surrounds classical music.

Contents Page

Magazine Front Cover Evaluation

This is the final front cover, See above, that Jack and I worked on. All the photos were taken by ourselves and were edited using Photoshop. Here is my Evaluation of the Magazine Front Cover.
Before I started to plan out my final front cover, there was a lot of research done by Jack and myself. We looked at an array of college magazines and you can see a few of our choices further down on this Blog. After looking at other magazines and seeing which looked the most professional and eye-catching, we started to have a look at what we could bring into our own magazine and what would increase the overall look of the front cover. As you can see, the Masthead has been split into three fonts. 'Grades' is in a thick and bold font, with a thick black outline. This is a Serif font and which denotes a college theme as often in American, college based media you will see this style of font. The 'Babes' is in a love heart, graffiti font and denotes the youthful love scene as the shape reminds the reader of the sweets 'Love Hearts' which are primarily eaten by children/teenagers. The 'Grades' font was on one of the magazines we used for research and seemed like a very strong and easy to read font that would go well with our magazine. We had a look at one magazine where the whole page was packed with information and was really full of coverlines and showed just how full the magazine was. I thought that this was perharps a little too over the top so decided to take the idea of a packed magazine and calm it down a little. I think I have achieved this by filling up a lot of the page with information and coverlines of what the reader can expect in the magazine. This is an example of choosing a convention on another magazine and developing the idea into my own. I think this cover challenges usual college magazines because it is not boring or focused around college primarily, it has articles on girls, a large part of a male teenagers life, and also things like Gym memberships and good clothes to wear to look 'cool' in school. These are all large parts of college life and do not centre around the work as many would.
When I was planning i also had to choose a target audience for my magazine. We had been specified that the mag' was to be aimed at college students, the rest was up to us. I decided that I would like to do one for mainly a Male market as I don't think this has been done much before in college magazines. The age range I decided on was a range of 15-21 year olds, I chose such a broad age range as i wanted this magazine to be read by many more people than the college students as i expect it to be open to more people. If a 16 year old takes this magazine home I want it to appeal to the slightly younger and slightly older market. e.g. Brothers, cousins who are maybe not students.
I made this magazine specifically for the age range i chose by thinking about the type of Fonts to be used, colours included, content of the magazine, coverlines, pictures etc. I think i have achieved the youthful look as when you glance at the front cover, you can immediately tell it is designed for a younger audience as all the models on the front cover look like they are teenagers, the colours are very vibrant and the font used is quite a smooth and fun looking font which you would not expect in an adult magazine dealing with politics etc. 
The colours used on the front cover are almost fluorescant ranging from Lime Green to Bright Pink. I chose this style because most of the successful college magazines have bright colours and attractive writing, the designs that i considered to be quite boring were the ones that only stuck to Black, White and Navy sometimes. I wanted the coverlines and masthead to really stand out from the page and make people look twice. I have also included a 'free gym session' offer on the front cover which would make a lot of people buy and read the magazine, i think that looking good and being healthy is a big bit of college life as this will help with getting the girls and also sports clubs. Some magazines in my research offered an insentive to buy but most were to do with the cinema and things to help you study. I didn't find one offering a free gym session.
To create this front cover I used Photoshop predominantly. Whilst planning I used the internet and also a few magazines that my media teacher had in the classroom, I have progressed in my ability to successfully research as i have picked up tips on how to get good results from search engines such as Google. The biggest progression in technology for me was learning how to use Adobe Photoshop on a basic level. Once i had taken a few pictures using a full size lensed camera and decided which ones I wanted to be on the front cover of the magazine it was only a matter of editing these and arranging them in the places they were to be in corresponding with the plans below. I would say that the two most useful tools for me in Photoshop were the change lighting tool and also the Stamp tool. The lighting helped to create the bright and youthful feeling which wasnt captured with natural lighting and the Stamp tool was useful to make the models skin smooth and unblemished. The lassoo tool on Photoshop was useful as it let me take parts out of pictures and move them around as single layers, this allowed an overlap of images and made the whole front page look much better. I have also learnt more about creating a blog using Blogspot (Blogger). I have some past experience with a personal blog but this has helped me in understanding how to layout a blog and upload images successfully.

College Magazine Planning

Me and my partner started the work by putting all our ideas down on a sheet of paper and thinking about which stuck and which were not very good. We decided to target a young male audience who are currently going through college. The magazine name we chose was 'Grades 'N' Babes', we though this was quite catchy and would appeal to the market we were aiming for. A lot of the magazines we looked at for research seemed to come across as quite 'nerdy' and not at all cool. We wanted to change this image whilst still including valuable information for students. We conquered this by saying that we would include good tips for getting girls and looking good in college. When asking people what they thought about these ideas, the response was generally a good one.
Once we had decided on the name and focus of the magazine, we started thinking about how to get out MCU and coverline photos included in the layout. This resulted in off-setting the main image slightly to the left and filling up the page with writing and coverlines to show that the magazine is worth the price of £1.50 and is full of great ideas for college! (See pictures on left.) I think we fulfilled our hopes with the plans and are ready to start photographing and editing the front page.

College Magazine Analysis

1. Do the magazines have any features in common? for example, do they have similar cover images, similar set of language, font, colour and/or layout, similar types of feature?


The three magazines all have a similar layout and stick to the general trend in magazine cover design. Each one has a large masthead at the top of the page, aswell as a large central image. They all try to use bright colours and iamges to connote positivity as they are going to be read by young, happy people.

2. which of the three would you prefer to read and why?

i probably wouldnt like to read any of them if i was to be completely honest, but out of the three i would probably choose "KingEd's" because it has a positive simple layout and the reader isnt overwhelmed with advertisements and a page full of headings.

3. now choose ONE of the magazines:

"current"

a. what kind of person would read this? look back at the handout on audience profiles to help you here.

i would guess that carers or traditionalists would be most likely to read this magazine as the magazines genre is being green and "ways you can save the planet". carers think of themselves as caring individuals and would have interest in the welfare of the planet.

Magazine Research

Here are some images of Magazine front covers I have just copied from the internet quickly. I am looking at these as they have a good array of colours, fonts, good content and would appeal to the student market.

The first magazine has an image of a young woman, possibly in her early 20's, sat in a 'Butlins' red jacket on a Carousel looking directly at the camera. She has one hand resting on her leg and the other one holding the hand rail. All of the writing on the front cover is Sans Serif and is in large writing with many different colours to attract attention.

The font and colour of the writing would connote this is a magazine for young people. The colours are vibrant and would appeal to the younger audience. There is a picture of Britney Spears on the front, with the chance to meet her body double inside the mag'. This connotes that the magazine is for a younger audience because Britney was mainly targeted at the young teen - young adult market so this would attract the attention wanted.

On the second magaznie there is an attractive woman holding her shirt open, revealing a lime green bikini top and a tanned body. The image is on a dark green background and the writing is in Sans Serif white coloured font.

The attractive woman on the front connotes that the magazine aimed at a young male audience. The dark green background connotes that the magazine is Irish orientated or comes from Ireland, most of the coverlines are about items that were founded in Ireland or have a fuor leaf clover behind them. (A national symbol in Ireland.) This magaznie would probably be aimed at a young Irish Student.

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First Blogggg!!!

Hi Guys!

This is my first post in Media Studies, I will be blogging throughout the year so look out for more!!

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