Music Magazine: Research and Planning, Task One

Music magazine front cover analysis

  The magazine cover I have chosen is the January issue of 'NME'. The name of the masthead is clearly visible in white which stands out from the cover image and the colour can be associated with anyone at any age, suggesting this music magazine has a variety genre of music. The font for the masthead is the simplest of all - 'Arial black', this is one of the most common font in the world as it is bold and very easy to read. The masthead is an acronym for "New musical express", but since 'NME' has been established since 1952 and has been publishing weekly, it is a very well known magazine therefore there is no need to explain the acronym. Right underneath the masthead is the date of publication and the price of the magazine, this will allow the readers to notice whether if it is the latest issue. If it is the latest issue, the target audience would most likely buy it in order to keep up with the latest news in the music industry.

  The cover image of the magazines are the famous Lana Del Rey who has become rather popular these past couple of years amongst teenagers and young adults. Just in case anyone doesn't recognise her, her name is written boldly in blue across the magazine cover. acting as the cover line, allowing everyone to know who the character on the cover it. Since she has been gaining popularity, people would love to find out about her background, therefore the extra cover lines of "I'm a psycho!" and "The true face of modern american icon" will definitely intrigue and attract the target audience since they would like to find out the "true face" of her, which will lead the target audience to buy this music magazine at the  low cost of £2.40 that can possibly be found in changes lying around the house.

  The colour scheme of this magazine is mainly red, white, black and sky blue, the colour sky blue is associated with youthfulness, suggesting this music magazine is targeted at young adults. Furthermore, "Red, white, blue's in the sky" is part of Lana Del Rey's lyrics from her famous hit - "National Anthem", this clearly has a link to the colour scheme found on the front cover of the magazine.

  Puffs and plugs can also be found on the left third and right side of the front cover, along with the bold word "free" which will definitely attract a great amount of target audience.

  These elements clearly suggests that the target audience for 'NME' are young adults is that there are other musicians of different genres around the page, such as Enter Shikari, Biffy Clyro, Nirvana and Bob Marley. Even though there are a variety of music genres, the musician names listed are mainly popular amongst young adults.

Music Magazine: Research and Planning - Activities

The five research activities I will work on are:

Web-based research and report into the target audience
I will begin by providing details of the target audience groups for a variety of music magazine titles, which will then lead me to narrow down my research to the target audience group of the genre of magazine I will be creating. I will be selecting a magazine cover and post this to my blog and write an accompanying 500 word analysis of who the target audience is for the magazine, how the cover has attempted to appeal to them and what conventions of cover design are evident.

Transcript of interviews with identified target audience
I will be interviewing a number of people who will fit into my identified target audience group, they will be answer me what elements they like to see in the music magazines they read. Their answers could be influential for the product I will be creating.

An annotated example of a music magazine double page spread
This will allow me to demonstrate that I understand the conventions of music magazine as there will be new elements in the double page spread as I have already done cover analysis in my previous project. I can identify the different types of feature that may appear across a double page and this will then be reflected in my own product.

An essay discussing the representation of people in my chosen genre of music magazine
I will be discussing the representation of both the musicians and the fans/readers. I will be focusing on mise-en-scene used in the cover images and photos used in double page spreads. This will demonstrate that I understand how magazines encode representations and this will then be evident in my photography for my music magazine cover.

A Prezie detailing the conventions of a chosen genre of music magazines
By using an online presentation tool, I will be looking at a variety of titles from the same genre and identify the recurrent elements of the genre - covers and content, which these conventions will be incorporated into my product.

Ideas from the suggested activities provided.

'Chronicle' Front Cover and Contents Page