Front cover and contents page.

This is both ny front cover and contents page I designed, Understandably their are a lot of features I'll need to includ in my proper music magazine; but this is my first attempt. I plan to make my next magazine cover and contents page to include more features and mainly look realistic, as if it's a real magazine.

Music magazine: Research & Planning.

Various magazines and their target audiences. 

Kerrang! and Q discussion. 

Firstly, both of these magazines contain features that I wish to include in my magazine. However, they also contain features that I do not wish to include in my magazine.

Kerrang! has the target audience I specifically want to have, I want my audience to be around student age. It conveys the individuality and desire I want my magazine to feature, I want this as it personally seems key to catching the genre of my audiences eye. I want my magazine to offer insight to the depth of music and what current musicians are doing to further the art in music. I want my magazine to be a Rock genre. However I want small elements to make minor comparisons with other genres, but not a lot. I want to do this to expand the genre of rock that my target audience would support, the comparisons between them would make my music genre appear seemingly better. I want to discuss the difference between rock and roll and classic for example; I would expose the excellence of what my target audience support.  This is how the magazine Q links to what I want to include. 

This magazine focuses on music that isn't necessarily in the weeks top ten. It's more insightful to the art of music and skills around it. It's this type of feature I want to incorporate into my magazine.

I want my magazine to be appealing to a person who see's it for the first time however, so I would like to have highly motivated graphic images like those on Kerrang!, this is because I think they're eye catching to a person walking by. I also want to include two of the three 'most appealing words'. I believe these key features are what will make my magazine cover appear eye catching and realistic. 

Music magazine: Research & Planning.

Various magazines and their target audiences. 

Q magazine

Q magazine is aimed at particularly more older audience. It's aimed between persons in their 30's and 40's. It's specific role as a music magazine is to be alternative. It offers insight into music, reissues, televison, films, games etc. Though the most part of the magazine is filled with interviews and compiling lists.

It's very alternative clearly into what it offers. It doesn't appear massively appealing to a younger audience like Kerrang!, in fact it has very little to offer to persons within that age group. Though that isn't to dispute that 16-24 years olds don't or haven't purchased this magazine. 

The background of this magazine cover of Q has a field, this would reinforce the idea of them having an older target audience as stereotypically we consider people of this age wanting to relax in peace and harmony. This contrasts with the busy and bold connotations of alternative music. 

Music magazine: Research & Planning.

Various magazines and their target audiences. 

Kerrang!

This type of magazine aims specifically at a niche audience, this is because it holds concern topics and themes that are relevant to people who listen and are interested in rock music (as this is the music genre the magazine offers) and its background. The title of the magazine Kerrang! is onomatopoeic of the smash of an electric guitar, it identifies its audience as individually minded and independent of thought, and musically talented or experienced. The audience is defined by attitude, passion and loyalty. Their current figures in selling are still currently high and their audience has remained by the definition 'loyal'. 

They audience are made up of 40% females and 60% males along with Kerrang!'s demographic fall into the social class D-C. The dominate age of which these persons read the magazine are between 16-24 years old. 

This magazine can be seen as being aimed at a young audience through it's various use of graphic images, layout and eye catching fonts. Being aimed at youths it's display on the magazine always remains contemporary and up-to-date. It displays what we associate as common faces and interesting advertisement for its youth. It's said that three words particularly have the greatest effect on magazine covers. These are: free, win and sex. Kerrang! uses at least two of these words on every issue from my understanding which therefore appeals to their target audience. 

Contents page examples.

I've been looking at some examples of contents pages, I've done this in an attempt to grasp an understanding of what I may want to incoporate into my contents page. These examples I've displayed I feel are useful as they all pose aspects of a contents page that I think would be useful in my own page. They all display individual qualities I believe are effective and would make my contents page appear realistic. Take the simplicity of 'July Contents' for example, though it's very vague it appears realistic and useful, it's also appealing from it's image placed on it which attracts a buyer. This is just one of the many features from these four examples that I feel are useful when creating my contents page.

Contents page, first draft.

During today I also made my first start on my contents page, here is my first draft of it:

Understandably this does lack many features of a contents page. For starters it's majorly eye catching, however this is my first attempt and I still have tonnes of work to do to this page. Next week I will consider adding more colours and images in an attempt to make the contents page appear more realistic and desirable.

Magazine cover, third draft.

Today is the third week I've been working on my first draft of my magazine cover, this is my finished product of the front cover of todays lesson:

As you can see it currently contains a title and strapline, both of which differ to highlight the magazines title but also what it has to offer. It also contains a plug as you can visibly see and it's there the price is established. Furthermore it has secondary leads down the left side of the cover, this offers insight to my reader and is used in an attempt to attract them to buy my magazine.

There are however, conventions of magazines that I'm still lacking. These include a box-out, lure and feature. These are conventions I will have to bare in mind on my finalised cover.

Magazine cover, second draft.

This is my second week working on my magazine front cover, this is how I did.

Magazine cover, first draft.

This is my first draft for my magazine. I edited the photo with colours and pixels, but there is still a lot to be done to the magazine cover as a whole. By next week I plan to of included a tagline, photos and plug.

Front cover photograph ideas.

We recently took some photographs in order to get an idea of the picture we would use for our front cover.

All of these ones I took are set in a forest clearly to support how my magazine is alternative when compared to others.

Though none of these may necessarily be used as my front cover I will definitely take each of them into consideration to see which target audience will be most appropriate and eye-catching to my magazine.

Should magazines be held responsible for the social ramifications of the representations they offer?

To what extent should magazines be held responsible for the social ramifications and representations they offer?

500 words

The magazine genre aims itself at teenage girls. They all mainly revolve around the idea of how one can make themselves look beautiful, each magazines' splash shows a beautiful women smiling positively and brightly. They contain straplines, tags, pugs, menu's and captions all suggesting insights inside the magazine of fashion and beauty tips. It's highly potential that this can have a negative effect on teenage girls as they're at an age of vulnerability, the magazines could have a very influential effect that's in some circumstances, extremely bad. An example of the negativity of the magazine would be a headline from Cosmo Girl's magazine, it read ''Real-Life Stories Inside: I Posed for Playboy''. This puts a positive spin on the headline, inferring that it's okay for teen girls to pose nude for Playboy when of course it isn't; Playboy is adult associated, not teenage girls associated. Furthermore the young teenage girl can feel it's compulsory to follow the fashion and beauty tips given by the magazine, they may want to look like the exact person advertised on the cover and this has lead to cases of anorexia and bulimia. These are clear negative effects of magazine publishing. 

On the magazine publishers behalf this is a rather irresponsible form of publishing, their typical role is to publish guidance to teenagers through difficult issues. However this gets drastically pushed to the limit sometimes. We don't consider posting skinny models on a magazine cover a form of guidance, correct? The publishing of what the magazines deem appropriate can also have a shocking self-esteem effect; in fact, 'Kids' Health' suggests: that media plays an unfortunate role in girls' plummeting self-image. Adolescence is a time of identity formation. Girls are becoming women physically, mentally, physiologically and sexually. During this critical stage of development, teen magazines are inundating girls with stylized portraits of society's ideal beauty. Furthermore a main negative effect is known as the 'Sexualization of Girls'. This is known as one of the most damaging effects on girls and magazines are held responsible for this; this is due to the fact that they instruct young teen girls on how to look what they define as sexy and how to get a boyfriend. The girls reading teen magazines begin to digest and believe the message that they are only sexual objects.

Though I'm talking about the main effects it has on teen girls that doesn't disrupt the fact that it can have an influential effect on boys too. Magazines aimed at teenage girls convey a two-dimensional impression of adolescent girls as boy-crazy clotheshorses who are obsessed with how they look according to children's health. If this is true, then there is an evidential problem with regards to the perception to boys and girls presented by the magazines. As a matter of fact, the top top-four teen magazines had staggering forty-four percent of articles focusing on sex or dating and a further thirty-seven focusing on appearance. A minimal twelve percent of the articles were reserved for advice about school or possible careers. As an adult it'd be easy to frown upon what the magazines advertise on their covers, but taken into consideration of the mind of a teenager - it's possible that what's advertised could have a much greater and crucial effect. Models predominate the ads and photos used on the magazine covers. The faces are always strikingly pretty and the bodies, well toned. It can have a surprisingly strong impression on teenagers. 

I think to quite a far extent it is indeed the magazines that are responsible for some of the social ramifications, not necessarily all of them but a vast majority. I say this as they do stretch the limit on what they should be able to publish. Personally, I think if these magazines where less imperative and more informative then we'd say a more positive effect than negative, I think that instructing young teens is a wrong approach and publishing older attractive young woman radiates a sense of what these girls will think they should look like whereas if they're informative, like pictures of normal pretty people their own age and information about fashion etc then this is more suitable and age based. This would definitely have a better effect. 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culturenews/4990907/Teen-magazines-are-sexualising-readers-says-watchdog.html

http://voices.yahoo.com/popular-teen-magazines-their-possible-effect-on-35176.html

http://www.ehow.com/list_7769492_negative-effects-teen-magazines.html

Magazine analysis & IPC case study

Magazine analysis

X Factor

My opinion is that the target audience for the X factor magazine is around 11-17 year old's. I get this impression from the celebrity icons presented on the magazine cover and bright colours such as orange and pink. This magazine cover has many codes and conventions, the first of which is the masthead located on the left hand corner of the page, the large 'X' displayed immediately shows us what the magazine is, the X factor. Furthermore it uses a pug where is says 'WIN!'. Again this is in the colour pink which tells me as well as it appealing to 11-17 year old's, it's more aimed at a female audience rather than male. Another piece of evidence of this is would be the splash, in this instance it's Nicole Scherzinger, already a celebrity icon for a female type of audience so the headline regarding her is going to inevitably be eye-catching to the target audience and get them interested in reading and purchasing the magazine. This particular magazine features a lot of box-outs. Varying from black, orange and pink. It also contains a secondary lead, these include Tinie Tempah and KE$HA, in comparison it has a menu as well telling the reader on the contents of this magazine. From the use of various images and bright over used colours it appeals to its target audience as it is firstly noticeable if you were out shopping, also the big fonts and blown up images are rather engaging to persons supporting these celebrities and the show. The orange and pink are really positive colours implying to the reader that this product is going to be fun and happy; something they will want to read. There's no doubt that the feature of this magazine is to inform you about the the show itself, though the subheading does offer more insight than that, it offers you the chance to review what the celebrities of the show are getting up to and how the contestants are handling the competition which appeals to the audience as they're curious to know about these people as they're who they watch week after week, 11-17 year old's enjoy the insight to these, they love the bright colours which the magazine both contains, it makes the magazine as a whole appealing to them. It's these codes and conventions that the magazine has used that they hope will get the magazine purchased, specifically by 11-17 year old's as it should be more appealing to them, however, of course other age groups may buy it and do buy it, but the magazine is mostly aimed at this particular age group.

IPC case study

The International Publishing Corporation was formed in the year of 1963. This was following the joining up of the UK's three leading magazine publishers during that time, George Newnes, Odhams Press and Fleetway Publications.

IPC would be an appropriate and ideal publisher for a new music magazine as currently, the company is not publishing a large amount of music magazines, With a long time of experience there is no doubt that IPC would help market a new music magazine and be there for the magazine's every needs. 

IPC reach an amazing 26 million adults, so I'm sure they have a wide range of magazine types. They have 3 divisions of a target audience, all of which reach about 10 millions viewers, these divisions are: mass market women, upmarket women and men. It shows that there interests are spread equally and widely. 

Magazine codes and conventions.

Masthead - the masthead is the title block for the magazine, it needs to be eye-catching and distinctive.

Menu - the list on contents inside the paper.

Plugs - they're well placed, a pug (or starburst) is the top left hand and right hand corner of a magazine, Usually the price, logo or position are placed here. 

Secondary lead - a sneak preview of an inside article or story. Usually displayed as a picture. 

Splash - main story of the front page accompanied with the headline and a photograph. 

Strapline - subheading (heading below the main heading). 

Tag - categorizing the reader's interest in a story by using a word or phrase to engage them. 

Box-out - a coloured box behind some text.

Caption - text underneath an image explaining it.

Feature - what the magazine is offering you. 

Lure - Usually a word or phrase to make the reader read the inside article.