What I've Learnt From The Textual Analysis

From analysis pages from other magazines I’ve learnt new things about the style of the kind of magazines I want to make. I analysed various pages from Mojo, Q, Kerrang and NME which all explore different elements of rock or indie music.

It’s become clear to me that most magazines have a certain three of four colour schemes that they stick too. Q, Kerrang and NME all have used the colour red amongst black and white to stand out, this is something that I want to take into consideration as red is a bold colour and all three of those colours contrast each other nicely.

I’ve also learnt that the magazines that are seen more as indie/alternative (eg. Q, Mojo and NME) all have elements of a formal house style in their magazine. Q is aimed at a predominantly older audience and is more formal than informal. Then you have Kerrang which is aimed predominantly at younger audiences so it’s mostly informal. By looking at these magazines I have realised that I want to make a magazine that reaches out to younger and older audiences so I will want to have a mixture of informal and formal style.

One this that these magazines have in common is their masthead. They all are at the top of the magazine and are in the same colours that they are always in. All of the magazine mastheads I looked at are iconic to their brand. Both Mojo and Kerrang’s were so well known that they can have their main image covering part of the masthead because their audience don’t need to see all of it to recognize it.

The thing I learned about images is that they are probably the first thing audiences notice so I need to use a few relevant ones. Both feature articles I looked at had the main image taking up about an entire page of the double page spread. Audiences don’t want to have to read lots of text and pictures make it very clear who the article is about. They also attract the artists fan base to the magazine.

I know now that I need to feature artists that will be connected with the alternative rock genre. I also know for the images that I take myself I need to make them fairly serious as all these magazines use the idea of seriousness in their photo shoots to connote to the style of music that they focus on. Serious codes of expression connote to serious music.

In my magazine I need to feature three to four fonts to make my magazine varied and to keep the design interesting. I’ll need to vary my fonts from serif to sans serif due to the mixed house style I’m aiming for.

My magazine needs to follow the conventions of magazines. My front cover need to feature a main image that takes up around two thirds of the page. If the image is of a band then I would have to re-think my design though.  Cover lines need to be at the sides of the front cover so they can be seen clearly.