Knowing what is needed in your magazine in order for it to be successful is essential, ensuring that it is meeting the expectations of my intended target audience and strong enough to go up against the other competition in the industry. To help me, I’ve researched different music magazines based around the genre that I am doing and looked into detail what they’ve included in the magazines for the audience, pin pointing their personal identity and their preferred reading. As a short summary, I discovered that the specific genre I picked include entertainment for the audience, such as giveaways, latest celebrity gossip and latest news in the music industry.

Magazines tend to have a specific genre that appeals to a specific target audience. The magazine must consistently use the same various techniques and structures that dictate the genre that it belongs to.

For example, we were tasked to annotate a magazine front cover and discern the demographics and technical design conventions that were used in Billboard magazine. The billboard I analysed was aimed at the younger, more accepting generation, hence the use of bright colours.  Furthermore, the use of bright colours is a symbol of the LGBTQ+ community, showing acceptance and unity. As a producer, being able to recognise what attracts your intended audience is key, demonstrating that you understand the impact different conventions have on media. The producer took into consideration that the intended audience are tribe wired ( free spirited, creative young singles), focusing on the psychographics and demographics that they value most, attracting them to the magazine more as they’re interested in the content inside.

Focusing forward, I will take into consideration how font,colour, images, psychographics and demographics all impact the message that your magazine gives off, ensuring that I achieve the right intentions with my magazine, attracting the right audience.

 

 

 

Being able to understand the basic conventions/rules of layout for a magazine is important as a media student, learning how technical and formal conventions have an impact on your work.

In pairs, we were given a magazine cover to analysis, picking up on the different types of conventions they’ve used to make their magazine meet the audiences expectations, standing out from the crowd.

These conventions include;

• Masthead
• Cover lines
• Main cover line
• Main cover star
• Barcode
• Price
• Plug
• Pug
• Insets
• Captions

As you can see in the image above, I’ve annotated the magazine, understanding and learning about the importance of the conventions of a layout. It is ensure that my music magazine actually looks like a magazine, ensuring that it meets my audience’s expectations. For example, the main cover line is essential for a magazine as it is the formal way of telling your audience what your magazine is about, giving them an intel of what they’re buying before they purchase it.

Focusing forward, I can now take into consideration how the way I layout my magazine has an impact on the quality of it, understanding the basic conventions/rules of a layout.

Here is my 1st draft of my front page.

As I’ve decided to change my music magazine to RnB instead of pop, I’m going to change my front cover completely. This is because I feel like it doesn’t convey my genre very well.