Designing the flatplan for my music magazine

i had to design my front cover for my main magazine and what i would like to  have on my main music magazine. Preparing my front cover and contents page for my magazine meant that i could change and decide whether i liked my design or not. It meant that i could also decide where i would take my images and who and what props i would use to take my images. I created my flat plans in 1 lesson so they are basic sketches  and are a guideline for what my magazine will look like as a finished product.

Evaluation of the music industry

I have looked and researched the topic of music industry so that i could understand my target market and how i can make my production of my music magazine better. I specifically looked at urban magazines such as VIBE and XXL.In my research of Vibe magazine i found that the main target market was mainly black american people and was also sold to a minority black british community. However i found that Vibe magazine had to be closed down. The closure of Vibe left only two large-circulation music magazines, XXL and The Source, focusing on hip-hop and R&B. The Source had its own troubles, going through a bankruptcy and emerging under new ownership recently. The top 10 advertisers of the magazine decided that they no longer wanted to advertise and the magazine went out of business creating themselves debt for a very small company.818,OO copies of Vibe magazine was sold in the second half of last year (2010) Which is a healthy figure, which means it was a popular magazine. 

The statistics that i have found on the internet have helped me decide what i could include in my magazine. I have found what made the magazine work and what i failed the publication, I will take these factors into account when creating my publication. I realised advertising created most of the income for the magazine so when they lost big advertisers it effected their profit

Creating the music magazine /1st lesson

In this lesson I began to create my masthead, strapline and storylines for my magazine. I was to decide what colours and what fonts I would like to include in my layout. For a selection of fonts to suite my magazine  i went to dafont.com a website that has a variety of cool fonts that I could use I chose three fonts out of many and from those three i chose one that i prefered and that would suite my target market. I used this font to create the masthead for my magazine. I was also asked to think about where I would place my images on my front cover and the images I would use on the contents and double page spread. It was important to think of my target market so that I could choose a suitable font, colour design and use the right language to appeal.

Comparative analysis

the generic music convention codes employed by the magazine suggest that the target audience are both males and females aged between perhaps 25- 50 years old. This can be supported by the idea of the masthead title. The style of the ‘Q’ us sophisticated and appeals more to the older generation perhaps more than it would do to a younger generation.

The mode of address suggests that this issue is specifically focusing on women in the music industry this is supported by an image of Madonna at the front who is one of the mature pop stars around this time. This supports the idea that the reader of this magazine is not only a mid 20’s + reader but also enjoys the pop scene. The strap line identifies that women also read this magazine with it reading “women in music”. It is evident that this magazine contains British bands mostly apart from Madonna who is the feature article.

The features of this magazine suggest that the target audience needs are to brush up on their knowledge of the latest British music. They are very much into the British music scene and are not exactly mainstream or wanting to know about gossip so much, although it does come with the magazine, they are interested in the artist’s latest work etc.

The layout and design of the front page is quite dark it is a close up image of Madonna with her directly looking at the camera the colours black and red contrast giving the magazine cover more effect the colour of madonna’s name matches the q masthead so there is consistency in colour .


The genre , mode of address and layout and design of the magazine suggest a niche audience

The generic music convention codes employed by he magazine suggest the target audience are girls of around 8-12 years old. The masthead strapline and earpiece all are in very girly colours pinks and purples the artist in the centre of the page is also colour coordinating with the colour theme. The colours also suggest that the reader of this magazine is a younger person and so does the font style.

The mode of address suggests that this magazine is to entertain the younger generation . There are a lot of prices that can be won which is clearly presented on the main front page. Things like ‘win a call form your favourite popstar ’ immediately suggests that this magazine influences young girls they are mainly mainstreamers who follow the crowd and are highly interested in gossip.

The genre , mode of address and layout and design of the magzine suggest a mainstream audience.

masthead research

In class we established that  a masthead can define the attributes of a magazine and who the target audience may be. We can tell by the colour font size font type what the demographics and psychographics etc. I have collected a number of mastheads from different music magazines and have annotated them to show who i think the target audiences are for these main music magazines.

Cover content analysis slideshow

View more presentations from stoliros.

Here is a slideshow presenting how i produced the front cover and contents page of the prelimanary task.

masthead research

To add to my research of music magazines. I searched on the internet for mastheads of music magazines and i annotated them describing and commenting on the type of audience the masthead suggests the magazine is aimed at.