My music magazine is going to be apart of the genre of Pop and will be called Horizon Pop

I chose this name as it highlights the genre of music I have chosen and allows me to create a magazine that covers many different areas of pop music.

Mission Statement: Here at Horizon Pop we’re all about empowering the younger generation to become a part of something great. We aim to give freedom to any young creators within the industry to express themselves and be true to who they are. We want to inspire the next generation to fall in love with Pop and to show them the many opportunities out in the world and to create an uplifting safe environment of positivity and happiness.  

Slogan: A magazine all about empowering for the younger generation

My research allowed me to understand the pop genre and how it is described.  As I want a successful and empowering magazine, I want to focus on the words that I have associated with Pop, as well as focusing on the message that my mission statement sends to my readers. When I come to make my magazine I need to factor in uses and gratification theory (entertainment, information, personal identity, social interaction) as well as my unique selling point which will be the front cover of my magazine. As I progress forward with my research for my music magazine and come closer to producing it, I need to remember what audience I am trying to appeal to and uphold my mission statement and brand.

Knowing your client is the most important when it comes to creating a media text. By knowing your audience you are able to appeal to their specific demographics and psychographics. To do this creators of media will use Audience Segmentation, a marketing strategy designed to identify and target audience subgroups. These subgroups can be divided by many thing such as Class, Age, Gender or Ethnicity, which should be taken into account when creating a media text.

When creating a magazine you need to think about what you’re implying whether it through text, images or colour as everything within the media world has connotations and denotations that need to be considered. For example the Billboard cover annotated above, is something that tends to be targeted at people within the music industry as it will more than likely include technical language that an amateur reader might not understand. However this specific cover is also targeted at fun individualistic young people that don’t conform with society, that have been attracted by the bright neon colour that gives a modern energetic feel to the front cover.

Understanding the technical design features of a magazine and knowing my target audience will help me greatly when creating my own media text. That is why when I come to creating my front cover I will research my specific audience segmentation as I want to be able to relate to my target audience and create something that fills their needs and wants.

For a magazine cover to be successful it will include all of the main technical design features. In pairs we were tasked with finding Technical or Formal conventions within the front cover in order to understand the importance of design. Every good magazine cover should include:

• A Masthead (The Title)
• Coverlines (Headlines) 
• A Main cover star or stars (Used to attract a wider audience.)
• A Pug (An offer within the magazine often placed in a box or circle at the top of the cover.)
• A Barcode
• The Price
• The Issue Date
• A Plug (Tells the audience about a feature or article in the magazine.)
• Captions
• Insets (Smaller images of articles also in the magazine.)

Identifying the main features of a magazine will help me when I come to make my own. I know that my audience will expect there to be the main key features of a magazine to be included in my front cover. I also understand that there are certain rules when it comes to making a magazine such as the layout and the basic conventions and that without a Masthead, Coverlines or other design features my music magazine won’t be successful.