Analysis of Existing Magazines

To establish what my target audience looks for in a magazine I will now analyse a few existing magazines in the same genre, considering all the techniques they use to make their pages appealing to the audience.

NME Cover - October '08

NME stands for (The) New Musical Express which fits the kind of publication NME is perfectly, it implies a cutting edge, underground musical phenomenon. What's more interesting is the fact that over the years the full name has been dropped and the abbreviation has become more common place, this fits with NME's status as a very 'trendy' magazine because abbreviations cannot go out of date.
They use a very strong, powerful logo and tend not to change anything about this issue to issue, keeping the font, colour and position the same most of the time. This is a very wise move as it introduces a strong idea of brand and means that regular readers can easily find it on the rack. The main title article has a large, slightly chaotic font which uses a contrasting colour to the majority of the cover to draw attention to it. It is also tied intrinsically to the style of the cover stars, The Automatic, who are an accessible pop-punk band. The letters overlap and differ in colour ever so slightly and the whole title is on an angle, this all adds to the ramshackle, untidy image that the designer wants to create. As with most magazines the rest of the text is all in one easily readable font so as to stop the magazine looking too messy. Any lists of bands are alternated in colour to stop them fading into each other and this has the clever effect of making each line stand out so that a potential reader can easily spot the name of a band they are interested in.
Any bits of text which are written over the main cover image have a strip of colour beneath them which serves the dual purposes of making the cover more readable and also adding to the 'punk' aesthetic (a reference to old punk album covers which used ransom notes as inspiration).
The language used on the cover is fairly standard, a quote from the band accompanied by a summary of what the interview will be covering (which also contains a cheeky little pun referencing a famous song by the cover stars). They also use the word 'dick' on the cover which shows that the magazine is intended for a slightly more adult audience (whether the magazine is bought by the person who intends to read it or bought for them by a parent is more significant a divide than it may first appear) you wouldn't for example find a swear word on the cover of Top of The Pops Magazine.

Kerrang! Cover - March '04

Kerrang! started out as a dedicated heavy metal magazine and this explains the origins of the name, it is intended to be a loud, metallic noise (possibly a loud, electrified guitar strum?) but in recent years as Kerrang's focus has started to shift away from metal music it has started to more commonly be known as just K!. The name is almost always shown in the same font, location and size in each issue and is normally accompanied by the magazine's motto "Life is Loud!". The font used is a kind of industrial, roughened one, with all the letters capitalised, not the most subtle attempt but definitely fitting in with the all over style of the magazine. Kerrang! have also now established enough of a brand power and regular readership that they aren't afraid to obscure some of the title with the cover image.
Obviously this isn't an average issue of the magazine, it isn't dealing with one artist but rather is an "Icons" issue with one major article discussing prominent, established artists. However there is still one large image of a cover star, cleverly posed to allow room around it for more images. It's also interesting to note that when dealing with many large artists, Kerrang! has not chosen to put their number 1 'icon' as the cover star but rather the one with the most commercial clout, at the time Greenday were huge and much more likely to entice potential readers than say Marilyn Manson or Kurt Cobain who are also featured. As well as this main article the cover also mentions an exclusive album preview, gig reviews and news on a list of other bands.
Kerrang! generally uses bright, contrasting colours (particularly yellow and pink) to make it stand out and this cover is a great example, all the text is either in one of these colours or mounted on it and this contrasts well with the pictures (as most rock bands tend to wear dark colours). K! also know their target audience very well as the combination of black and electric pink are associated with the 'emo' sub-genre, a powerful market which for a long time the magazine has involved itself with.

Q Contents Page - October '08

This is an average contents page from the indie music magazine Q. Unlike the two magazines I analysed above, Q has a much more structured, neat style and this page displays that perfectly. Pretty much all of the information is split into three sections; features, regular and review. Review is housed in it's own text box with a small image relating to one of the articles while the other two sections are featured in one column spanning the length of the page. The cover feature or star's image takes up a large proportion of the remaining space with one small inset text box telling the reader which page the main feature can be found on. In this case, the magazine is running a special set of articles on one band (Oasis) so they have slightly sectioned these pages off and used a different colour for the page numbers.
The designer has also presented all the information about Q at the top of the page, the magazine's website, MySpace address and the issue number are all clear and easily visible. This very much fits in with the all over design of the magazine which tends to be very neat, concise and well presented. The whole style is very minimalist, presenting only the information that needs to be presented and this, combined with the high quality photography causes Q to look more like a fashion magazine than the average rock music publication.

Mojo Double Page Spread - March '08

This is a feature article from the rock magazine Mojo, it is not a typical example of Mojo's style but I decided to look at it because the design really interests me and it's possibly something I'd like to emulate in my own work.


What is so impressive about this spread is the extent to which the writer, designer and photographer have all collaborated to create a whole gothic feel, from the black and white photography to the clever font choice and the fact that the whole thing is tied together by the interview with the star.
The first thing that draws the attention of the reader is the very powerful image that takes up most of the double page spread; dark, brooding and quietly subversive the image of a grinning, tattooed man standing proudly outside an old style American church is a striking one. The photographer has bravely not made the musician the absolute focus of the image, by putting him perfectly in line with the church it creates a powerful overall image that makes the photo look a lot more like a piece of art than the average magazine shoot.
The title of the article is split into two fonts which are very distinct, the first a slightly uneven, capitalised text which is reminiscent of an old typewriter and the second a long, messy scrawl. These two fonts both fit in well with the overall style of the article and the designers decision to slightly overlap them makes the composition of the piece slightly more edgy and interesting.

Target Audience

I will establish the target audience for my magazine based on similar magazines such as NME and Kerrang as these are the publications which seem closest to what I want to create.

The target audience for Kerrang for example seems to be predominantly young males (probably in the younger end of the 15-44 age group that the NRS presents) split pretty evenly between ABC1 and C2DE. Readers tend to follow musical trends and Kerrang represents this in it's journalism, courting popular opinion within the alternative sub-culture. Many of the magazine's target audience would identify heavily with a 'youth tribe' and would probably express this in what they wear and how they act. A perfect example is the now slightly defunct 'emo' trend that Kerrang identified early and have very much geared the style of the magazine towards ever since. Although this doesn't represent a huge market it is one with a fairly large amount of disposable income, and therefore the advertising space is of great value to the right companies.



Information gathered from NRS.com, bauermedia.co.uk (who publish Kerrang) and from being an occasional reader of the magazine.



NME represent a similar but noticeably different market share and it is interesting to note that most of the differences are psychographic ones. For example NRS.com lists NME's readership as also being mainly 15-44 year old males with a slight bias toward ABC1 (but not a hugely significant one). However NME readers are generally slightly older (IPC Media say they aim the magazine at 18-34 year olds) and have slightly more matured musical tastes, they are less likely to follow a musical trend blindly and more likely to listen to music in different genre's without immediately dismissing it (although NME does have a tendency to shy away from committing to being an alternative magazine in an attempt to sell more copies). The overall way in which NME is constructed is aimed toward a more discerning reader. Interestingly this makes it a very different beast for potential advertisers as the readership are less likely to buy something just because it is associated with a sub-culture, advertising has to be sharper, more professional and much more imaginative to capture potential customer's attention.


Information gathered from NRS.com, IPCmedia.com (who publish NME) and from being an occasional reader of the magazine.





Media Pack for DEVIANT:

For the young man who isn't afraid to be an outsider, his jeans are tatty and his hair is long. The iPod in his pocket has bands that no one's heard of sit amongst classics from the seventies and guilty chart pleasures. He is disillusioned with the way Kerrang and NME follow trends and wants real journalism applied to real music.

In hard demographics this is a young male, possibly a University student who comes from a lower middle class family. He doesn't fit into the 'ABC1C2DE' method of categorisation but he may work part time in a bar or shop. He goes to gigs, buys the occasional CD and only bothers with bands merchandise if he likes it in it's own right, not just because it has the bands name on it. He may used to have read Kerrang but feels he has 'grown out' of that style of magazine but NME doesn't cover underground enough music for him to be interested in.

Introduction

Our main coursework task is to create a music magazine; we have to design the cover, contents page and a double page spread. It must be clearly aimed at a realistic target audience and our design choices must show this.

I have chosen to create a modern rock music magazine as this is an already established genre but to add a more interesting twist I will be designing an issue focussing on bands who are rejuvinating genres, for example Proto-Punk or New-Goth bands. This allows me to focus on a more niche and interesting area of music but still have an existing magazine model (which will make it easier for me to identify target audience etc).