My music magazine TNT, represents the pop culture music genre and has a target audience of young adults who are lovers of the pop music industry. The idea is to feature not only new and upcoming bands but also mainstream bands and artists. It is a very in depth music review magazine featuring reviews of an artists full body of work, songs, albums and both best and worst play lists, exclusive interviews and also more light hearted articles which make for a good read(when viewing the contents page this will give an insight to the range of pop based topics the magazine covers).
I decided to use the masthead 'TNT' this stands for a type of dynamite/explosive, which connotates as something with a big impact and a long lasting effect, ideally this is the effect that I wish my magazine to have. The simplicity of using letters makes it more of a statement which will hopefully be more memorable and recognisable in the long run. I wanted to make it look bold and stand out against the white background whilst still representing the colourful nature of pop music. Therefore my original idea was to use bright colours like aqua blues and bright purples, however I also wanted to represent the idea behind the masthead of being explosive leading to my decision of using colours such as reds and blacks. I realised after I had designed my masthead that it looks very similar to the 'NME' masthead so I thought about changing the colours around using black letters with a red outline. But this defeated the object of making it bright to represent the pop industry, for that reason I opted to stick with the original colours of red for the lettering as this colour is bright, bold and represents explosives.
The slogan which I decided to use is 'It will blow your mind'. This is a creative use of a play on words, as dynamite blows things up which relates to my masthead. Or it could be interpreted as the music and general content blowing your mind which is usually thought of as a positive effect something has on someone, which I definitely want my magazine to do. Unfortunately the font I have used is not very legible on display. However in its original state the bold and slanted text represents it being 'blown away', which again reinforces the slogan in itself.
To ensure that my main pictorial of the girl band remain the dominant focus of my front cover I have placed all other text around them. For example the text to the right is particularly made to curve round her body. Apart from the bands name, which I have written across their bodies in the centre of page to represent that they are the main focus of that issues of the magazine. I depicted a curly font and replaced the dot for the 'i' with a love heart, this portrays their feminist and girly nature of the band. I chose to dress the girls in bright and outstanding outfits to attract the readers eye and also to reperesent the bright and bubbly personality/nature of the girls in general. They each have a chocolate loveheart lollipop which are acting as microphones to represent the music side of things. I opted for this particular prop because it also reflects on the bands name 'The Sweetest Thing' and the shape reinforces the represenation of femininity. In addtion to this I gave each girl a particluar coloured centre to reflect on their outfits and gave the centre feamle a diffent colour to represent that she is the band leader.
Once I had conducted my research I noted that the usual conventions of music magazines are that the font colours are reduced to a minimum of three. I wanted to use coloured fonts that were similar to the coloured dresses that the three girls were wearing. I therefore chose to use purple, yellow and black, as I wanted to stay clear of orange as I was afraid it may contrast with the red masthead. The governing text colours are the black and purple as these are bold and clear colours to use to enable the reader to be able to see the magazine easily. The yellow I have used to highlight particular words or phrases that are particularly important to make them stand out. For example I used yellow for 'hottest' as this colour represents something warm or the sun. Also I repeatedly circled the main headline of the cover to ensure that it captures the most attention and is immediately associated as being the main story. In addition by using language such as 'exclusive' this says to the reader that this article is only available in this particular magazine which persuades them to buy it.
I also found within my research that music magazines have backgrounds to represent their particular music genre/style, for example dance magazines have very busy and bright background, whereas punk and heavy metal focused magazines have dark and bold backgrounds. My magazine employs a white, plain and simple background. This is to enable everything featured on the cover stand out even more to attract the readers eye. Also because the magazine is simply pop music I wanted the background to reflect this, which is why I stayed clear of making my cover too busy an over the top, but still made it bold and bright to represent the genre at hand.
One of the main aims of any magazine is to draw in the attention of potential customers which is why I have tried to make it as eye catching as possible. Another aspect to grab the readers audience are plugs, often advertising a free gift with the issue or a potential free gift with a competition. Therefore I opted to include a free CD with it being a special new year addition this features all the favourable songs from previous years which ties in well with the theme. The text in the right hand corner reads 'see in 2009 with a bang', this could suggest a bang as in fireworks which are expected of the new year or 'bang' which again relates to the title of my magazine, this is accompanied by a large arrow which navigate the readers attention to the free CD.
To carry out the new year theme all the content featured on the front cover is linked to this. For example the readers get a chance to read their most loved pop stars new year resolutions. If the artists featured are well known and the majority of the target audience like them then it more likely that they will be persuaded to purchase it. Which is why I also included images of already popular existing pop acts. The article featured along the bottom of my cover directly addresses the audience by asking 'who did you...', this immediately draws in the attention of the reader as they want to know the answer and therefore consume it. I used the 'apple' logo to represent the 'i tunes', competition my magazine is advertising as this logo will be notably recognisable to music lovers.
Overall I think that my magazine follows general conventions of music magazines, based on general layout, colours, fonts and content. I did note throughout the research process that many mastheads are slightly overlapped my an image to portray how recognisable. However I decided against this idea, I wanted my masthead to be clearly visible as it is a new music magazine therefore consumers need to know the masthead in order for hem to be able to recognise it in the future. Covering up lettering of the title would be an idea for a future issue once it has made its reputation.
In conclusion taking everything into account I believe that my new music magazine has the potential to be a success in the magazine industry and an influence to those who are greatly interested in the music industry itself.
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