Analysis of music magazines

Kerrang is a rock magazine, published weekly by Bauer Consumer Media. Its emphasis on certain types of music seems to change quite frequently with popular music trends and it has included music styles such as rock, heavy metal and grunge but more recently has focused on emo and metalcore music. The readership of 'Kerrang' is 60% male and 40% female and the choice of colour, style and male artists on the cover seems to reflect male interests rather than female. Metal and goth music have created subcultural identitys and the style and colour of 'Kerrang' is representative of stereotypical emo and goth fashion which has become more commonly associated with the word 'emo' rather than the music. In recent years, the media has associated emo with being emotional, shy, introverted or depressed and the dark colour scheme of black and red reflects this as well as the serious expressions of the band on the cover. The clothing of the band on the cover is also stereotypical of emo fashion as they have dark styled hair and are dressed in plain black clothes. Even without knowing the name or music of the band, it is obvious what audience they are aimed at, because of their stereotypical emo fashion. The same colours are The band Funeral for a Friend are a well known emo rock band and the use of their name in large lettering on the cover draws attention to them as the main feature which makes it obvious that the magazine is aimed at emo and rock music fans.

'Kerrang' uses words and phrases on the front of the magazine to support the loud and heavy sound associated with metal music, for example, 'Life is Loud' and the name 'Kerrang' refers to the sound of a block chord played on an electric guitar; a loud and abrupt sound to reflect its music genre. The language used on the cover is informal and the use of slang terminology shows that the readership consists mainly of teenagers and young adults. 'Kerrang' specifically targets the emo/goth subculture, presented by its dark colour scheme, style and fashion as worn by the band on the cover.

This is the cover for the weekly pop magazine, 'Billboard'. Although 'Billboard' is an American magazine, it covers popular chart and new music releases in various countries in print and on the web. This magazine cover contains a wider range of colour than 'Kerrang', immediately targeting a different audience from the emo or goth subculture and its use of dark colours on the cover. The readership of 'Billboard' is male and female young adults, however this particular issue seems to target female readers as the main use of text colour used is purple, a stereotypical female colour. The main photograph of the page is of Miley Cyrus, a pop singer/actress, popular mostly in America, showing that the main focus of the magazine is on American artists and chart hits. Miley Cyrus is pulling a silly but her expression is friendly, reflecting the fun appearance and style of pop music, in contrast to the serious expressions of the band on the cover of 'Kerrang'. 'Billboard' also features R'N'B or pop rock artists who's music is likey to also appeal to pop music fans of the magazine. The cover also includes captions of what features inside the magazine which are all featured around artists and their musical careers or latest chart updates. This is very different to the 'Top of the Pops' magazine, a pop music magazine for young teenagers which tends to focus on the personal lives of artists rather than their music. 'Billboard' uses informal language on its cover to appeal to young adults and its overall style and colour has connotations of fun and happiness, associated with popular music. I like the style of this magazine and will incorporate some of its conventions into my own.


This is the cover for the hip-hop and R&B music magazine, 'Vibe'.

Its focus is on urban hip-hop culture; fashion, politics and entertainment as well as its music, and has a circulation of around 8 million in various countries. 'Vibe' features many well known R&B artists as well as actors or other celebrities representative of the urban hip-hop culture. Artists featured in 'Vibe' magazine are predominantly black such as Ciara, Jay-Z and Kanye West and R. Kelly covers this issue of 'Vibe'; a stereotypical black hip-hop artist. Stereotypes of the hip-hop culture include aggression and the terminology such as 'thugs' and 'sickest' used on the cover reflect the common themes of violence and aggression in the lyrics of hip-hop songs. The colour and style of this magazine appears to be targeted at a male audience, with black and red as the main use of colours, mirroring the style of 'Kerrang' magazine, with its readership consisting mainly of males.

Evaluation

While carrying out my research, I found that sixth form magazines were quite hard to find as many schools publish a general school magazine rather than a specific sixth form magazine. Most of the sixth form magazines that I found seemed to be aimed at parents rather than students as most of them seemed to be 'selling the status' of the school by using the school name and logo as the main feature on the front covers, such as the Rainey Endowed School. These magazines seemed to be focusing on the sobriety and tradition of the school and could almost be seen as a prospectus than a magazine due to their formality which could be seen as 'boring' by teenage students as I found that the magazines that appeal to teenagers have 'busy' front covers with lots of text, pictures and bright colours to attract the reader. I also found that there was a lack of ethnic representation in the school and sixth form magazines that I looked at and I wanted to cater for different ethnic backgrounds in my magazine. I found that magazines such as Sugar, Heat, Look and music magazines are popular with teenage girls as older teenage boys did not seem to read many magazines and I based my design on the layout of these magazines as the majority of the sixth form and my target audience are girls. These magazines were very different to the style of the school magazines I found that were generally quite plain with no indication of what is inside the magazine on the cover.

I wanted to make a magazine that would challenge the forms and conventions of existing school magazines by making it fun interesting and lively to appeal to older teenage student readers rather than their parents.

I chose a medium close up photograph of a female sixth form student smiling over her shoulder at the camera for my cover, against a background of grass. I chose this photo as I felt it connotes friendliness and she seems independent and free to wear what she wishes as there is no sense of a uniform. This photo seems friendly and relaxed which would relate and appeal to sixth form students.

The font that I used for my title was less serious and organised than the standard fonts that were commonly used in school and sixth form magazines and could represent graffiti lettering which creates an informal feel to the cover that would appeal to teenage readers. I used yellow text boxes around the captions 'UCAS forms', 'Uni open days' and 'Revision tips' as they could represent post-it-notes that students would often use for revision or on noticeboards in their bedrooms, which also creates a sense of informality that would appeal to teenage students.

I read some of the magazines that were popular with teenagers to get an idea of the language used to address the readers which was informal and chatty, unlike the formal language commonly used in school/sixth form magazines. Therefore I used informal language on my magazine cover such as 'Meet the new team!' which creates an inclusive welcome and a friendly chatty feel to the magazine that would encourage teenage students to read it rather than parents.

On the front cover, I included a balance between school and lifestyle features to ensure that the magazine appealed to the interests of older teenage students as well as advice and information about school/sixth form. I was aware of the lifestyle of older teenagers and included a caption about a feature on the Reading festival as I knew that many teenagers attend music gigs and festivals and this would be popular with a large majority of both male and female members of the sixth form. I also included a competition to win an ipod and itunes vouchers as technology plays a big part in teenagers lives and would be appreciated by older teenagers.

For the contents page I had originally planned to have three photos in each corner with the text down the middle but when I started making it, I changed it to photos down the left side of the page and the text more to the right as I preferred this layout. I wanted the contents page to represent a page from a notebook or a diary drawn by a student and I did this by using a font in a handwriting style and brushes of stars, arrows and scribbles on the background to represent doodles. I felt that this created a fun, creative and informal feel to the page that would encourage teenage students to read on.

I used the results of my research to decide what I would list on the contents page of what would appear in the magazine. I mainly focused on events and advice for school and sixth form as most people said that they would like to see advice for sixth form life in the magazine. I found that students would prefer to read a magazine on their own interests than school information as this could be too 'boring' so I mixed the school information between music features and competitions on the list. I also included captions with each feature in informal language to make them more appealing to read such as 'Natasha, Helen & Alex speak out' which was a phrase commonly used in popular magazines when featuring an interview with a celebrity.

When carrying out the project I encountered some problems when taking photographs as I found it hard to frame the photographs well and many of the photographs did not look as effective when loaded onto the computer. I also had a problem with sun spots on some of the photographs and so I had to re-take them on a less bright day and I learnt how to use the self timer setting on the camera which I used to take a photograph that included me on the contents page. From this project I have increased my knowledge of using cameras to take and frame photographs well as well as how to use photoshop as I had not used it before this project.

Contents page

Magazine cover