Analyse and compare/contrast 3 double page articles of 3 music magazines at least one of which should be of the same genre as your own magazine

I will be comparing and contrasting three different magazine front covers. I will demonstrate how the media uses font, text size, language and colour. The first magazine front cover I have been allocated to analyse is called ‘Vibe’. The masthead is placed at the top of the magazine cover in large font and coloured in yellow. Its yellow font helps it stand out against the blue background of the text. The image takes most of the space of the front cover, with the cover lines on the sides. The image even overlaps over the masthead, but it is still recognisable, and still will be noticeable from a distance.

Different types of font have been used to create affect and make the important texts stand out. Colours such as white, yellow, green, red and blue are used, which suggest that the magazine is targeted at an older audience.

Ciara is featured on the front cover of the magazine. She is a well-known singer, which may attract and influence people to buy the magazine. This magazine targets new readers as well as usual readers.  The image is in direct mode of address, where the person in the image is looking straight at the reader. The direct gaze helps simulate interaction with each individual reader. The image of Ciara is a medium shot, and takes most of the space on the front cover but there is space for text as she is standing side wards.

The language used is not formal as the text ‘Hot like Me’ questions the audience in an un-formal way.

In my opinion, I think the front cover is effective, making it look like a classy -fashion magazine, targeting a teenager, older female audience.

The second magazine I will be analysing is called ‘XXL’. In XXL editions of magazines they will always use the large, bold and thick title. This is also used in other music magazines such as ‘NME’ and ‘VIBE’ which clearly demonstrates that a large title must be more appealing to the audience. The masthead, XXL, also denotes the meaning extra, extra large, and emphasizes how the magazine is ‘massive’ as are the rappers featured in it. The text is on a large red box which helps contrast the colours and show the magazines brand and image more clearly, the colour connotations of the red box also represent power and the energy the magazine shows.

A feature added above the masthead is ‘Hip Hop On A Higher Level’, which is the magazines slogan to attract the readers to the magazine, it also imposes the image they are trying to create about how there magazine is better than its rival competitors in the same magazine genre, making it seem that they are providing more and of better quality. 

XXL will also have one or more famous artists on the front of their cover such as above the magazine features famous singers named ‘Nicki Minarj’ and ‘Drake’ from the same band named young money entertainment. XXL generally use hop-hop, and rap. This immediately shows to the reader what type of magazine it is just from its front cover, making it very clear from the front that the magazine is based on music, specifically in the Hip-Hop, and rap area. XXL always make the font image very large to make it clear to the reader what the magazine will specify in for its best and main story. 

The image used of Drake and Nicki is a medium shot were the image is directly looking at the audience.

The language of this magazine is all indirect language as it doesn’t directly speak to the audience. 

This type of magazine is not aimed at an older audience, and I feel this magazine would be aimed at the 16-27 age groups. My reason for this is because the artists usually represented on the front cover are usually more recent era, which instantly shows us that the magazine is formed around that genre of music and everybody knows what genre of music these artists perform.

With the audience I also feel that this edition is portrayed towards a male and female market as we can see this from the intimidating postures that are represented here. In my opinion the magazine looks unique and sensual.

The third magazine I will be analysing is also called ‘Gossip’.  Colours such as red, white, yellow and black have been used to create contrast between the colours and make the magazine front cover look catchy. Different sizes of font also have been applied to emphasise the important words in bigger font and the least important in small font, using different sizes of font also makes the magazine front cover look attractive.  Some fonts are either on a strip with a background colour and some are either placed on the side without a strip with a background colour.

The medium shot image takes up most of the space on the magazine front cover of three punks.  Small stamp sized images have also been used to refer to the quotes.

The language which has been used on the front cover of the ‘NME’ magazine is simple and uses text which is straight to the point. The language is not questioning the audience, but the language informs you of what’s happening or has been happening.  

In my opinion I believe the magazine is overcrowded although it is attractive and straight to the point.

Each magazine uses different fonts, colours, and language and image style to create a unique magazine front cover. However all three music magazine mastheads such as ‘Vibe’, ‘XXL’ and ‘NME’ have been placed behind the images to create a professional magazine feeling towards the audience.  This style has been used in nearly every music magazine front cover.

How does the magazine you have studied construct and reflect its intended audience?

The magazine I have studied is called ‘Plum-line’ which includes information on updates about Plumstead Manor School such as updates on what’s new in Plumstead Manor, how students are getting on with their subjects and stories on year groups. The magazine is easy to read as the language that has been used is simple. By looking at the magazine I can instantaneously identify that the magazine is published by a school as at the top of the page I can see little logos of ‘humanities’, ‘art colleges’ and ‘Applied learning’.

The heading ‘Plum-line’ is big and bold, the background is red which creates a contrast with the coloured red uniforms. Images have also been used to show readers the experience students had as information which is given links in with the images. By looking at the images I know what the information given is going to be about.

Each article has a colourful background colour which makes the magazine look eye catching this attracts magazine consumers as the magazine is noticeable.  By looking at the colourful backgrounds I know that the intended audience is students as for adults the magazine might have been more formal, not so attractive and noticeable without bright primary colours. Heading for each article are also big, bold and attention-grabbing as they are coloured in black.

Text sizes are also formatted in different fonts and sizes such as the heading would be bigger than the article. This has been used to attract readers to the title first so that they will know what they will be reading and will be interested to read the article.

Names of students who wrote the article have been placed beneath the article black and bold with a font size bigger than the article text so that it makes it clear to the reader who had wrote the article. Italic font has also been used to represent student names to make the magazine look a little fancy and realistic.

There is also an image of the school on the right hand corner of the magazine; this has been used to represent the school. Magazine consumers can also identify what the school looks like. The title also represents the school as the heading ‘Plum-line’ links in with plum- stead manor school.

In conclusion I know that the magazine is aimed at a younger audience because of images of Plumstead Manor School, simple straight to the point information and the bright colour scheme.

Analysing three music magazines covers I have created.

I have almost finished my front cover of my music magazine I have created. I have researched into music magazine front covers on Google and used some techniques. I have used different font sizes to make the magazine look eye-catching and professional. I have used picnic.com to create my title “Buzzer”.

The colours which I included are pink and green which are opposite colours and I think by using these opposite colours such as pink and green it makes my magazine front cover look attractive.

For improving my front cover of my magazine I could use mode of address by including small images which represent text. I could also space out my text to make it look even as there is a lot of free space on my magazine front cover which makes it looks really simple.

My second magazine article I have created is called ‘Black’. The title refers to the genre of the music magazine which is aimed at gothic people who love black. The image also relates to the title as the singer herself is wearing black.

I have used a bright red font so that my text could stand out as the background is very dark. The bright red, white and black colours immediately attract my attention to the magazine so I decided to keep the colours to red, white and black.

To improve my music magazine front cover I could use different sized fonts to make the important pieces of text stand out than the least important. I could also add more text to make the music magazine cover look busy as I think the music magazine front cover looks dull and boring.

My third magazine article I have created is called ‘Vibe’. I have used the colour purple for my title as I think it looks attractive and outstanding.  The image looks as if it will be on an R&B, Hip-Hop type of magazine and normally the magazine ‘Vibe’ has certain images just like the one I have used.

I have used colours such as purples, and blues and pinks so that they stand out. Different fonts have also been used so my magazine looks attractive.

I could use different font sizes, such as making the least important text smaller and the important text bigger so the audience will get an insight of the larger text first.



Questionaire

From carrying out this questionaire and analysing the results, I found out that 45% of readers were males and 39% percent females aged 17-20. This immediately gives me the idea that hip-hop/pop music is idolised by a younger generation. Furthermore by analysing my results I know that males and females aged 17-20 like to read NME or Vibe the most, this gives me a overall idea of what type of magazine I could base my magazine on. In addition question 7 is an important question for me to find out what makes people eager to read and purchase the magazine by looking at the front cover. Females mostly ticked 'gossip' and males ticked 'Upcoming events & new albums' this question gives me an insight of what I should put on the front cover of my magazine to attract my target audience. By looking at my results I have also acknowledged females and males aged 13-16 and 17-20 like to read about solo artists whilst 21-24 year olds like to read about bands. This gives me an idea of what my target audience like to read about. These findings will make it much more simpler to create an effective magazine as it will have to be priced low as people usually spend 60-80p weekly as most 13-16 year olds do not work, and 17-20 year olds work part-time an earn low expendable income.