Research Summary

From my research of music magazines I have learnt many things. Firstly, I have learnt that the front cover of a magazine it is always better to make your subject have eye contact with the camera and therefore the audience. This is so that it will catch the audience’s eyes and they are more likely to pick the issue up. Also, on many music magazines such as Kerrang! And NME, display their main feature image, which is on the front cover, over the logo, giving the impression that the artist, is more important than the brand. I have found that a lot of people in the magazine industry use fun fonts and bright colours to make the pages interesting, however also keeping to a consistent colour scheme and style.

Through looking at all the different music magazines I have decided that I want to make a rock style magazine. For these types of magazines, they usually have a series of rock colours, these are mostly black, white, red and yellow. The props used are normally microphones, guitars, drums, and other instruments as well as props that reflect the text and the rock stereotype. Rock music magazines typically put a lot of posters in each issue to as another selling point for the magazine.

Usually Rock Magazines are targeted at a unisex audience, they use things such as posters, sob stories, fashion, posed pictures and bright colours to attract a female audience, whereas they use dark colours, competitions, easy read articles with pictures and feedback for guys. And then they also have; band alerts, album releases, hot news, live reviews, concert pictures and band merchandise adverts. From this I have realised I want to make a unisex orientated magazine.

In the main features boxes are used on the side for quick reading of the article. These are sometimes filled with  questions to attract the audience and make it more personal, the readers want to know the answer to the question. In the features they use a lot quotes to make the text interesting and the tones of the writing are casual and laid back they usually set the tone of the pictures they go with. The mood can change the whole view on the story which is where the target audience come in, so you have to make sure that you have the right tone and mood for the reader to stay interested. Sometimes, they use different colours to break up the text to make it more noticeable and the fonts always have to be different for the main text used in the articles.

This research has helped me to plan and design my own magazine and to make it appropriate for the right audience as well as making it interesting.