Researching Magazines!

Now I am focusing on my portfolio I need to create a pitch fro my production of a music magazine. Before I write up my pitch I will carry out some research on other existing magazines to help me plan and create mine. I will look at how the front cover, contents page and double page spreads are all laid out and the type of things included on them. I will need to analyse the images used, the text, layout of the pages, langauge and contents etc. This will help me decide what to include on my magazine. From my research I hope to learn what a music magazine should look like and how it can attract the targeted audience.


Firstly I needed to think about the type of music magazine I wanted to produce, the options I could choose from were, classical, Rock, pop, country or Western. I narrowed my options down to Country and Rock as I wasnt sure which type of magazine I wanted to product just yet as they both seemed very interesting. To help me decide I started researching both types of magazines to see which type I would prefer to base my magazine on. To begin my research I wanted to focus first on the front covers of the two types of magazines (Country and Rock)....


The first magazine I looked at was 'Kerrang' this being a 'Rock' music magazine.

One of the first things I noticed when looking at this magazine was the main image and the focus that has been put on the eyes of the celebrity. This magazine has drawn the attention of the reader easily onto the eyes of the main image. This is not the only image that has been used for the front cover of Kerrang, located on the lower section of the magazine are a few small images that illustrate the contents of the mag.
This edition of Kerrang has included a poster to add interest to the magazine and to attract reader attention. They also use words such as 'Huge' and 'Win' to draw in the target audiences attention. These have been made bold and are a slightly larger font that the rest of the text so that they stand out. I will think about using these types of words to try and catch my audiences attention.
The magazine mainly talks about upcoming gigs and celebrities with comebacks and life stories. For my magazine I will think about interviewing my models that I will photograph as celebrities in my magazine.
The genre of this magazine has been made very clear as the front cover is focused on rock bands such as 'My chemical Romance' and 'Foo fighters'. So when producing my magazine I will need to use this idea and inlcude images of my rock bands to make it clear to the readers what kind of music magazine mine is.
Kerrang also uses a good consistent housestyle. It mainly uses the colours, white, red, yellow and black, this makes the magazine look well presented and professional. This also makes the text easy to read and clear. For my magazine it is important that i stick to a consistent housestyle to make it look professional and well presented. I will also be using a consistent font to make the writing clear to read.


I have now looked at the front cover of another rock magazine to see if they use the same ideas as Kerrang. This will give me even more of an idea on how a rock magazine should be set out and how mine should be laid out and what it should include. The magazine i researched was 'Q'....
Again this rock magazine uses one main image and my attention is drawn to the eyes of the celebrity.

This magazine uses the same ideas as the previous rock magazine I looked at to attract the attention of the readers. They use the word 'FREE' to straight away draw in the attention and interest of the targeted audience. They also have placed this text in a small red bubble in order to make it stand out. When creating my magazine i will consider using shapes to make my text stand out and to add interest.

Again Q has a very good housestyle as it has mainly used the colours red, white and black. These seem to be very popular colours that are used by many rock magazines so I have decided to use these colours for mine.

The background colour used for this magazine seems to be very similar to Kerrangs. Both are very light which makes the main image stand out even more. I will use this idea for my production piece.

They have used this image as it is a photograph of one of the band members of the Foo fighters. They magazine have used this as the contents of the mag includes an issue on this celebrity and his band. So this image is illustrating the contents of the page and links to the text on the mag 'FOO Fighters, dave grohl saves rock, again'. For my magazine i will be including images that also relate to the contents and text of the magazine. The magazine has included many different names of other celebrities to attract in the readers attention. The celebrities are being represented here. By having their names included on the front cover this shows the reader what is going to be in the magazine. Q is clearly targeted to the readers that are interested in this kind of music and these artists. On my production I will create names of artists that i can include in my mag.

Now I have analysed the front covers of two rock magazines, if i do decide to go through with the idea of making a rock magazine instead of a country I now have more of an idea on how i would set it out. I now understand how rock magazines try to add interest to their front covers and how they attract the attention of their readers. Not only do they use their images to draw in attention they also use words.

The words I will try to include on my magazines will be FREE and WIN! I have decided this as both of the rock magazines i looked at used these words.

I would also be using a main image as well as a few small ones that i will place around the main image to add interest and to illustrate the contents of the mag. I will also focus on the housestyle and text of the front cover.

Before i decide to stick to producing a rock magazine i have looked at the front cover of a country magazine to see if i would prefer to create a magazine like this. The country musuc magazine I looked at was Billoard.

Straight away I could notice that this magazine was not at all like the other previous rock magazines I researched. On this magazine there is not as muhc going on. The front covers of both rock magazines seemed to include a lot more images and text. Because of this, this magazine did not interest me as much as there was less to look at and there are no really eye catching images or pieces of text.

This country magazine doesnt use any eye-catching or 'buzz' words.

The coverlines and text of the Billboard are located all over the place on this mag.

However this country magazine uses good housestyle as the text is the colours that are used for the masthead of the magazine. On 'Billboard' the colours red, blue and yellow have been used, so some of the text has been made these colours also which makes the magazine look well presented.

Instead of using a colour for the background this magazine has used a background image that has been blurred to make the main image stand out. I prefer the plain background colour idea that is used for the rock magazines as i feel it draws in more attention to the main image.
Now I have researched how the front covers of both rock magazines and country music magazines are laid out I have decided to go through with producing a rock music magazine as i feel i will be able to produce this better as i already have a few ideas on how i will set mine out and what sort of text and images i should include from looking at kerrang and Q. I found the ways in which they grab the readers attention very interesting and noticed these straight away, however when i looked at the country magazine i thought this was slightly less interesting to look at and there were no real eye-catching images or words.