For my magazine cover, I experimented with a range of different fonts and effects to try and come up with the most suitable masthead for the jazz genre. I tried to make each idea different to each other in a different way to make sure I have every possible option to attract a large audience of jazz enthusiasts. I decided to experiment with different colours but I believe that after my experimentation that a dark red and black masthead may be my best shout because I feel it represents my genre and the colours of red and black are the typical colours you may relate with an underground club. I wanted to experiment with space in between the text as I had gathered from other jazz magazine covers that the text is usually tall and spreads across the whole of the top of the magazine. I tried to include as many features of AIDA as possible, for example I am going to try and include a coloured masthead which will bring attention to my magazine instead of a plain colour like white as it makes my brand stand out to the audience.

I created a mood board to convey all aspects of the genre of jazz. I found pictures, conventions, typefaces, artists, album art, magazine covers, logos, lyrics, colour palettes, tour posters and magazine layouts that I thought were appropriate to my genre of jazz.

From this mood board, you can see that there is lots of nice colours and the album covers contain a lot of art and drawings which portrays the genre as fun loving and artistic but there is also a strong theme of red and black and a dark theme. I want to give my audience the best representation of the genre and I will include denotations and conventions for new readers which can attract them to become a new customer and fan of jazz. Using this inspiration, I am going to try and include these in my magazine brand so that I can encode this to give my audience a sense of nostalgia which they can decode to provide them with their preferred reading which will live up to the audience expectations.

I chose Miles Davis as my dream cover star for my magazine. It was slightly more challenging to find modern news articles surrounding Miles Davis as he passed away more than 30 years ago but I found some media sources that I was able to use to portray him as a brave, talented, interesting, courageous yet arrogant and self confident musician. I found these articles very important in helping me to find the metanarrative of Miles Davis and the connotations I could withdraw from the news stories and media sources helped portray the star as ordinary yet extraordinary at the same time. These denotations will be useful to portray the paradox of my star image and therefore I can represent the true paradox of a jazz musician through my cover star. On the second slide I have included images of every aspect of my star image from the setting and mood which would be like a jazz club with red and black lighting, the outfit I would like a hat and a suit with a bow tie to make my model look smart and like a vintage jazz musician. It is also very important that they have a jazz instrument such as a saxophone or a trumpet as I need that for the Mise En Scene of the star image.  I would like my model to be looking like they are playing the instrument and I think I am going to try and add fake sweat to represent them as a jazz artist giving it their all in a live performance.

For this task, we were researching our audience and their profiles. Using the website Yougov.co.uk, I searched the stars of my magazine and from that I was able to find out the demographic of my target audience that were interested in the artists and other celebrities that they would also be interested in and this information is very useful to determine the preferred reading of my audience to be able to encode the desirable features which will be vital for my own magazine so my audience can decode these and they will enjoy reading it.

Using this data, I created a dating profile as a member of my target audience. I made this dating profile to give me a very good idea of my audience psychographics, as a producer it is very important for me to know my audience psychographics as this will allow me to include the appropriate features in my magazines to create the best magazine for preferred reading. I will now have a better understanding of my audience and I can therefore create a magazine for the purpose of education, entertainment, social interaction and personal identity.

I have chosen the genre of Jazz to base my magazine on. I have decided to name my magazine ‘Lounge’. I chose this brand name because when I think of jazz I think of the downstairs lounge to a club, with dark red and black low key lighting. With this image in my head, I will base my magazine with dark colours and a cool and calm theme and this will be my USP. The uses and gratifications of my magazine will aim to entertain and inform my customers while containing plenty of interviews to give a sense of social interaction, and my magazine will also be used to influence the personal identity of a reader as they will potentially inherit new characteristics through the reading of my magazine.  I will include lots of photos and advertisements to appeal to readers of most ages although the jazz genre mostly attracts individuals over the age of 40. I will include the views of critics in my magazine to appeal to the older generation. My mission statement is:

‘Lounge aims to satisfy and bring together jazz enthusiasts from all over the world. We keep you up to date with the latest news in the jazz world while including plenty of interviews and reviews to keep our audience interested. We will bring together jazz fans from all around the world to create a safe, comfortable and relaxed community for fans of Lounge to provide them satisfaction’

A magazine has several features which make it appealing for customers and make it a magazine in general. These are called the conventional features and I learned what each of these features. The features are as such:

The masthead – This is the title of the magazine and this is usually big and bold so that readers can identify it easily.

The main cover stars – These are the faces of the magazine and can be the deciding factor between two magazines, a main cover star is usually in relation to the main cover line.

The main cover line – This is the text that will catch the eye of the audience. This is usually a label for the main cover star which tells the reader who the cover star is or it gives an insight to what is featured in the magazine.

Barcode – The barcode is placed in the bottom corner or on the edge of a magazine to make it easier to scan when it’s bought.

Price – The price is labelled on a magazine to show the audience what they believe their magazine is worth.

Plug – This is a caption that promotes the magazine by praising it and hyping it up to show the audience how much better their magazine is than the next.

Pug – A pug is a small shape which is usually in a big bold colour to stick out from the background of the magazine cover, it usually contains a number or a figure which attracts the reader.

Captions – Captions are small subtitles which give little sneak peeks for the reader as an incentive to buy their magazine so that they can find out more.

Insets – Insets are smaller images featured on the magazine cover which give a slight bit of context to the captions and the plugs.

Cover lines – These are the captions that are dotted around the magazine cover but are usually featured on the left side of the cover so that it will be displayed when it’s in the shops.

It is important that I am aware of these conventional features in a magazine as when I design y own magazine cover I will have to make sure each one of these features is present otherwise my magazine will be overlooked by the audience whereas if they are all present then I can attract more readers and I will therefore get an increased revenue.