Today we were planning what fonts and colors we could use for our mastheads. I researched fonts online using  ‘what the font’ and ‘dafont’. I tried to find a few fonts on indesign to save me the trouble of downloading them online.

I tried using a range of colors to see which would suit my front cover best, based on the outfit I have in mind for my model.

The font on the top is very graffiti-like, I like this font as it gives a lot of meaning, however I do not think this will suit my genre, and I don’t think it is what my audience will decode.

I really like the second font, it has the modern texture and it is very bold and presentable. Based on other dance magazine covers, it is and ideal font to use as it is what my audience will be attracted to,  it gives that modern vibe to the magazine which is what my audience will be looking for and will most likely sell the product.

The next font for me is very bland and basic, it is more of a font that you would see on a comic book, I won’t be using this font as it is not very wild or energetic like my audience.

For the next font I tried using different colors to change the mood of it but it is simply too boring for what I want to create.

This next font I thought was very unique and flashy, but the only problem with this font is that some letters can be quite difficult to decipher.

For this final font I looked back at the NME magazine which I recreated, I thought this font would represent my model as above everyone else, however this could give an arrogant impression, suggesting my model has some sort of god complex.

I have created a moodboard on Pinterest as a source of inspiration for if I ever hit a dead end when creating my magazine. I’ve filled it with photos of music stars, color palletes, different fonts of text and different outfit ideas for my model.

Please click to be redirected to Pinterest

I used images which I feel represent my genre and my brand best. This will help me with my magazine as I now have a resource which I can use to determine which denotations I should be including (e.g. Bright colors, a modern and bold font, a flashy outfit for my cover star). I plan to use this moodboard to design my front cover, and if I encode the product well, my audience will understand and decode it the way I want them to.

Now I need to research a Dance music artist’s lifestyle, their dress sense, their social life, and how they are represented to the public. This will give me ideas on how to make my main cover star look appealing to my audience.

This will help when making my front cover for my magazine because I now have a general idea on how to dress my model to make them look ordinary, yet extraordinary.

To help me understand my target audience I used ‘yougov’ to research music artist’s audience, what their gender is? What apps and social media accounts they follow?

This information will give me a general idea of what Dance music fans are like as people.

Researching these Dance music artists has helped me to understand my target audience for my magazine. The gender distribution is relatively even, they seem to use a lot of social media platforms, and they seem to dress really flashy based off of the clothing brands they follow.

I will now use this information to create a dating profile based around a dance music fan.

By creating this dating profile, I now know who my audience are. I know what they like and don’t like. I now know what to include in my magazine to make it attractive towards them. I need to encode it by making it flashy and make it stand out by using bright and exciting colors and using bold and modern fonts. Doing this will ensure that they will decode it, so that my audience will not reject my magazine.

• I have decided to choose Dance Music as my genre of music for my magazine, I want to create a magazine with a club or concert vibe, a magazine aimed at young people which appear as energetic and flashy.
• I wanted to have a name that was short, snappy and catchy to the branding I have in mind, so i decided to choose the name Mix Mic. It uses alliteration to make it sound catchy.
• I used the word Mix because it is a skill that DJ’s need to learn to become successful.
• I also used the word Mic because sometimes there can be live performances from singers or rappers.

This word cloud contains adjectives which I would use to describe the Dance genre, and a few features which my magazine will actually contain. This is a source which I can fall back on if I am ever unsure on what to do next with my magazine. These words will provide me with the right ideas on how to make my magazine proved the uses and gratifications theory, meaning that entertainment, information, social identity and social interaction are all accounted for, so my final piece has a unique selling point, and will satisfy my audience.

Mission Statement

For all

‘MixMic will fill your mind with the music we all know and love, our product will include the dates, times, and locations for different concerts around the UK. We believe that the life of a party comes from the music, and that’s exactly what our magazine is about, creating an atmosphere. You can keep up to date with music stars in the Dance genre, and you can also view different sound system products from our offers page!’

This task helped me to understand the definition of audience demographic and audience Psychographic. I have learnt how to identify the audience demographic and audience Psychographic by analyzing the conventional features used. This will help me when designing my magazine because I will know how to identify the audience demographic of my allocated genre, and how to use conventional features to make it look attractive to the target demographic.

Today we were looking at different styles of music magazine covers, and learning the basic terminology of them.

The main conventional features of a magazine include:

• Masthead – The name of the magazine.
• Main cover star – The main photograph on the front cover.
• Main cover line –  The main feature in the magazine.
• Cover line – Sub-headlines of what or who is in the magazine.
• Pugs – ‘The ears of the magazine’,  can be the price of the magazine, the logo or an advertisement.
• Plugs – The selling point in a magazine cover, often explains what it actually is.
• Inset – A small photo which tells more about the contents of the magazine.
• Bar code – How a magazine is scanned at a till in a shop.
• Price – How much the magazine costs, this helps the company keep track of sales and when to decrease prices.
• Issue Date – shows when the magazine was published, this helps the shops selling them to keep track of when they were set.

Knowing this information is important because when designing our magazines we need to know which features are conventional for all magazines, and what effect they have on the audience. Knowing the basic conventional features of a magazine cover is important to know what makes a magazine look like a magazine. When designing my magazine I will need to know how to make it look and feel authentic, and this task has taught me how to do so.