Callum: Mock Ups

Front Cover

Contents

Both: Changes To Initial Ideas

Callum: After doing all of my research, I’ve realised two major changes I need to make to my issue.  The first is the date.  Initially, we envisioned the magazine as bi-weekly thing and so I planned the date to be as such. However, now that, thanks to our research, we have found that readers prefer a monthly magazine, I need to change the issue to reflect this.  Seeing as I was going to do an end of year issue anyway, this isn’t too much of a problem and all I really need to do is change the date on the issue to reflect this.

The second major change is what features on the front cover.  Before, I planned to feature a collage of music album front covers from 2011 and have the lead feature be on the Best Albums of the Year.  Seeing as our audience research, however, prefers band specific features.  So, to entice those people in, the main front cover story will be on a band.  However, the albums piece will still be the main feature and will be included on the front cover, but tucked away in the top left of the cover so as not to interfere with the photo.


Chad: After conducting the questionnaire and alalysing the results;  have chosen to change several aspects of my intiial ideas. After looking at Question 3 on the survey, the magazine should have its primary focus of pop/mainstream music, a fairly large focus on indie music, and a slight greater focus on dance and rock music compared to Rap or Classical music.Also, I will try and have an equal ratio of images:articles. It will be a monthly magazine. The majority of the features will be either band specific features or album review features, with some others. The magazine will cost £3.39. The magazine will not have a freebie as paying for freebies in magazines was not popular in the survey. It should have a professional written style, as well as the professional design. We will also use the logo they chose. Because of the fact that it would be impossible for me to photograph any festivals, and have never done so before I have decided to change my issue to a standard issue - November's. As I am no longer doing a festival special, the colour for the logo will no longer be green. The colour scheme will stick to neutral colours, which will also make it seem more professional. My contents page will feature photos from some of the articles, and my double page spread will no longer be festival act reviews.

Both: Contents Analysis: NME

Issue: 19^th March 2011

NME’s single page ‘Contents’ has a much more classic feel to it, compared to how it used to look like. It is however, still lacking certain information. One of the ways the ‘classic’ feel is produced is because of the new header. Whereas in the old style magazine, the header was a simple sans-serif bold typeface; the new style contents page’s header has a typography that is remarkably similar –if not identical- to the typography used on the masthead for The Times newspaper.  The Times is one of the more classic, upper class newspapers with an older target audience, so it is perhaps possible that NME is trying to appeal to an audience that is higher class, and older (though by no stretch is the target audience the same as The Times) than the previous NME.

The new design is also much more informative than the old one. For example, in the previous design, there wasn’t really a ‘proper’ contents page. It consisted of just one photo from one story (often one that’s never elaborated on, either) with a small bit of text describing what’s going on in the photo, and a band index informing of what bands appear in that issue (plus, in some issues, a subscription offer is included beneath the photograph). The contents page of the redesigned NME now actually looks like a contents page. The first notable thing about the new style contents page is that the 7 biggest articles (a mixture of features, regulars and reviews) are singled out with photographs and placed around the contents page, putting emphasis on them. These also have the page numbers overlaying the photo in white boxes at the bottom right of each photo. In addition to that, each story highlighted contains a pull quote from the article that sometimes makes sense (“We need ‘Angles’ to be a work of redoubtable brilliance”) and sometimes they don’t (“No shitting, no slamming doors, no sex”).  These pull quotes are in a Serif font.  Some are bold, some are italics. They do, however, bring down the tone of the magazine, to more causal and youthful. The tone of the magazine is also brought down somewhat by the tabloid-y hyperbole full writing  that is used throughout the contents page and the entire magazine.

The contents page has a lot of black lines and borders, which separate all the different columns, and also make it seem slightly more professional. There is a subscription section in the bottom right of the contents page, which is as big as one of the main stories. A subscription advertisement is placed on the contents page as it has one of the highest traffics of the entire magazine. The regular articles, are deemed less important, and are placed towards the bottom left of the page, in small text and picture-less.  The photos that are used on the contents page come from different sources. Some of them are lifted directly from the articles themselves, and were taken purely for that purpose. Some of the photos are outtakes, and some were archive photos that have been given a fresh lease of life. This ensures that they use the very best photos available to them - even if some are old archival ones – and the outtake photos seem more personal and more casual than the professional photos.

The designers of the contents page have evidently tried to vary the typography as much as possible, as there doesn’t seem to be much of a pattern. Some of the headings are in a sans-serif typeface – while others are in serif one. Some are in bold, some aren’t. Some are italicised, some aren’t. Some are block capitals, others aren’t. They are also all different sizes. This has probably been done to try and make it look more artistic. The sub-headings, however, are all uniform. They are all in a sans-serif bold typeface in block capitals, and in black. If they had varied the typography of the subheadings as well, it would have just looked messy - which is probably why they kept them uniform.

Previous Design for NME.

From analysing this magazine contents page, we will take from it: The simple colour scheme; The use of black and white; the simple colour scheme; the older, classier target audience; and the neat, informative layout.

Both: Contents Analysis: DJ Magazine

Issue: February 2009

DJ Magazine's single page contents has a very professional, well designed feel to it. The very first thing you see is the magazines sell line "Living And Breathing Dance Music", as it is on the centre-top of the page. The left of the page ties in with the front cover, because it features the same cover model (though in a slightly different pose) and refers to - and expands upon - the cover story, whilst using the same phrase "Flicking two fingers...". The portrait of the cover model looks quite professionally taken, is slightly artistic, and the colours match the 'FEATURES' section of the contents by being monochromatic. 


The 'FEATURES' section is separated from the rest of the contents as it has a completely different background colour, is in a different column to the rest of the contents page, and has its own colour scheme - which is monochromatic. There is also a unique typeface that hasn't been used anywhere else on the contents page. This is used to describe the feature stories a little bit more.

The contents of the magazine are split into colour-coded sections. The colours used are all modern, neon colours that match the youthful dance vibe of the magazine. The different sections are: 'UPFRONT', 'ACCESS ALL AREAS' 'MUSIC' and 'TECH'. The front of the magazine is the most read part of a magazine, as people tend to flick through front to back, rather than the other way round. The Magazine production team know this, so place the most popular articles (and features) in the first and aptly named "UPFRONT" section. In this section there are: all 4 cover features, plus another 10-page special feature, a fashions page, an editorial, and a gossip page (entitled "Bitchin' - which is a colloquialism"). The  'ACCESS ALL AREAS' section seems slightly more niche, and is filled with articles from clubs/studios around the world. The next section - 'MUSIC'  - includes a guest celebrity columnist's article, and some reviews of singles, albums and compilations - each with their own articles. Finally, the last (and most niche) section of all - 'TECH'  includes reviews of technological stuff. This is probably the least-read section of the magazine.

The typography of the magazine is all in a very modern sans-serif font. The leading of the text is quite large - which helps with keeping the contents page less cluttered. The letters are quite spaced out too, which also helps make it appear less cluttered. Around the mixing deck in the bottom right corner of the magazine, the text is wrapped. The tone of the magazine seems halfway between informal/ easy to read, and technical language. This is because it features informal language and colloquialisms - ("Bitchin' ") alongside technical language ("integrated DVJing software".)

All the photos on the magazine seem quite artistic and -in the case of the club and pool pics - atmospheric. This helps the page seem even more professional. The magazines website is written at the center-bottom of the page. This is to advertise the magazine's website as the contents page is one of the most seen pages of the magazine; and so that readers who want to find out more of the latest dance and DJ related news can look at the website to find this out.

After looking at this contents page, we will try to also have a professional, well designed feel to the ours; our sell line will be situated at the center-top of the page; our photos will be slightly artistic; and we will try to have as wide a range of articles as the magazine, but less of them. Because the magazine will have up to 50 pages, all of them will be similar to the first 50 pages of current magazines - which contain the better, more popular feature articles. This means that our magazine will be filled - from back to front with these quality features. Unlike DJ MAG, we won't feature colloquialisms such as "Bitchin'" as this lowers the standard slightly. For our typography, we will also use a modern sans serif font with a large-ish leading to help look less cluttered, and, in places, we will use text wrapping to make pages seem less 'boxy'. We will try and have a more formal tone of register than DJ MAG, so that the articles seem more professional, however, we will not have it so formal that it becomes too technical and high culture, as this will narrow our target audience.

Both: Survey Results & Analysis [complete]

Here is one of our surveys which we handed out to our target audience of 25 - 30 year olds:

Survey Results

Survey randomly distributed to 20 people of our target age group (25 – 30).

Q1] Are you...

Male (9/20 or 45%)

Female (11/20 or 55%)

Q2] Do you buy music magazines?

Yes (12/20 or 60%)

No (8/20 or 40%)

Q3] What genres of music do you enjoy? (Multi-Choice; 55 total answers; percentages have been rounded)

Pop (15 different people, 15/55 or 27%)

Dance (7 different people, 7/55 or 12%)

Rock (10 different people, 10/55 or 18%)

Indie (11 different people, 11/55 or 20%)

Hip-Hop/Rap (4 different people, 4/55 or 7%)

Classical (1 person, 1/55 or 1%)

R&B (7 different people, 7/55 or 12%)

Other (0 people)

Q4] Do you prefer...

Articles [more text, less photos] (6/20 or 30%)

Image Galleries [less text, more photos] (6/20 or 30%)

No Preference (8/20 or 40%)

Q5] Would you prefer a magazine that was

Weekly (4/20 or 20%)

Bi-Weekly (7/20 or 35%)

Monthly (9/20 or 45%)

Q6] Would you consider subscribing to a magazine you a magazine you enjoyed?

Yes (11/20 or 55%)

No (9/20 or 45%)

Q7] What is your favourite feature of a music magazine? (One tick answer only)

News (3/20 or 15%)

Album Reviews (4/20 or 20%)

Track Reviews (2/20 or 10%)

Live Reviews (2/20 or 10%)

Editorials (1/20 or 5%)

Band Specific Features (6/20 or 30%)

Other (2/20 or 10%)

Q8] What is the maximum amount you would be prepared to spend on a music magazine?

Average answer (rounded off to 2 decimal places): £3.39

Q9] Do you enjoy music magazine freebies?

Yes (11/20 or 55%)

No (7/20 or 35%)

No Preference (2/20 or 10%)

Q10] If “Yes” to the previous question, would you be prepared to pay more for your magazine if it included “freebies”? (11 people answered yes on the last question, so they were allowed to answer this one)

Yes (1/11)

No (10/11)

Q11] Which of these newspapers do you read? (Multi-Choice; 26 total answers; percentages have been rounded)

Daily Star (1/26 or 4%)

The Sun (5/26 or 19%)

Daily Mirror (3/26 or 11%)

Daily Mail (5/26 or 19%)

Daily Express (3/26 or 11%)

The Guardian (7/26 or 27%)

The Times (3/26 or 11%)

None Of The Above (1/26 or 4%)

Q12] Which of these logos do you prefer?

Logo 1 (14/20 or 70%)

Logo 2 (1/20 or 5%)

Logo 3 (2/20 or 10%)

Logo 4 (2/20 or 10%)

Logo 5 (1/20 or 5%)

Graphs

Survey Analysis

We produced a 12 question survey that we distributed to 20 random members of our target age group (25 to 30 year olds).  They filled them in and these are the results.

We asked the respondents of our survey what their gender was and if they purchased music magazines to scout out the market of potential purchasers.  Of the 20 people we randomly surveyed, 9 of them were male and 11 of them were female.  Of those male respondents, 5 of them purchase music magazines.  Of those female respondents, 7 of them purchase music magazines.  This means that, whilst the survey allocation was random, the results still show that there is still a sizeable female market for music magazines that we could tap into. Whilst the male market is still worth a fairly large percentage, we could try to skew towards female readers a bit more, or at the very least feature some females in our magazine.

We asked the question of which music genres our respondents enjoy so that we could see if we needed to focus on any specific genres.  We also allowed multiple answers to be ticked, seeing as we knew that people like more than just one genre of music.  We got a total of 55 answers.  15 of them were for pop music, 7 for dance, 10 for rock, 11 for indie, 4 for hip-hop/rap, 1 response for classical and 7 for R&B.  This gives us a very even spread of possible genres to cover and, since several respondents chose multiple, often completely opposite genres, there does seem to be a gap in the market for a music magazine that treats all types with equal reverence.

We asked the question of preference to image galleries or articles to see how we should ratio our images and text in our articles.  Of the 20 people we randomly surveyed; 6 of them preferred their magazine features to be image galleries (with more photos and less texts), 6 of them preferred actual articles (with more text and less photos) whilst 8 people did not have any strong opinions one way or the other.  This gives us a lot of leeway to experiment with the presentation of our articles and gives us the ability to mix up the format of the magazine often enough to keep it interesting.

We asked the question on how our respondents prefer the frequency of a magazine to help decide how often we should distribute ours.  Our initial idea was to make it bi-weekly, but the results tell a different story.  4 people prefer a weekly magazine, 7 prefer one that is bi-weekly and 9 prefer one that is monthly.  We now should revise our publishing schedule and strategy to reflect this, even if it does put us in direct competition with similar magazines owned by Bauer Media such as Q and Mojo.

We asked our survey respondents if they would subscribe to a magazine that they enjoyed to see if the subscription model was a viable option.  11 people said that they would subscribe whilst 9 said they wouldn't.  Interestingly; of the respondents who said they'd prefer a weekly magazine, half of them said they'd subscribe if they enjoyed the magazine.  2 out of the 7 people who'd prefer a bi-weekly magazine would subscribe.  And 7 of the 9 who prefer monthly magazines would subscribe to a magazine they enjoyed.  If we want the subscription model to be profitable, we would be best suited switching our production schedule to a monthly magazine.

We asked the question on the subject's preferred feature in a music magazine in order to see what we needed to focus most of our attention on in regards to the magazine.  We also limited this to a one tick answer question in order to better get a handle on the respondents favoured section.  3 people preferred news, 4 preferred album reviews, 2 preferred track reviews, 2 preferred live reviews, 1 person enjoyed editorials, 6 preferred band specific features and 2 chose other and wrote that “They did not like music magazines at all”.  So, disregarding the last two answers, we have a very clear percentage favouring band specific features.  But, if the results show anything, it's that we should also focus a good amount of time in each issue to album reviews and news whilst de-emphasising the other features.

The question of the maximum amount people were willing to spend on a music magazine was chosen to see at exactly what point people would stop considering purchasing a magazine and we could then take that into account when setting a price for our magazine.  By choosing the word “maximum” we could then get an honest answer with actual data we could use.  If we chose “minimum” we'd just get a bunch of “nothing” and “£0.00” instead of usable data.  The average price, after adding up all of the prices and dividing by 20 (the number of respondents), was £3.39.  This should be the maximum we price our magazine, though a slight price drop could secure a wide audience.

We asked whether our surveyed respondents enjoyed freebies in their music magazines to see if, if we were to include them, people would actually like them.  11 of them said yes, 7 said no and 2 had no preference.  Because we realised that including freebies would increase production costs and require us to jack up the price, we then asked the follow-up question, “Would you be prepared to pay more for your magazine if it included freebies?”  The almost universal (i.e. Everyone but one) response was an emphatic “no”.  Whilst this appears to be a damned if we do, damned if we don’t situation; we should probably not include freebies, especially since the higher price resulting from them would scare away at least half of our audience.

We asked what newspaper(s) people read as a subliminal question.  On the surface, it’s just a random question.  In reality, it’s a test.  Each of the newspapers listed has a different writing style that improves the further down you go (starting with The Daily Star’s tabloid gossipy “journalism” and ending with the extremely uppity and posh broadsheet of The Times).  From this, we can then judge the kind of writing style we will include in our magazine based on the kind that our respondents enjoy reading.  The writing style of The Guardian won out (7 different people ticked it on their surveys) so that means we should have a professional approach to reporting stories but leaving plenty of room to divulge our opinions once the actual story reporting is done.

Finally, we asked our survey respondents to choose between 5 different logo ideas for our magazine.  The most popular one would be spruced up and become the official logo of the new magazine.  Logo 1 won the majority vote (14 people).  However, we did not ask them why they chose the particular logo they did.  This is a missed opportunity as it would have given us an idea on how to improve it or know exactly why they liked that particular one.

Callum: Bauer Media Group Research

The very first thing that I found interesting from entering the site is how all of the corporation's music magazines (Q, Mojo & Kerrang!) are classed under “Men's Entertainment”.  Considering my original thoughts on who purchases music magazines (teenage girls), this was an intriguing discovery.  The audience research should reconfirm this; but it's still something to take to mind.  We may want to try and make a slight female focus when we create our mag.

Bauer Music Group owns three music magazines (according to their official website).  The first and  most successful is Mojo (average circulation: 87,262).  Mojo is a music magazine that delivers “a monthly dose of world class journalism and iconic photography. It represents a carefully crafted musical archive, providing its audience with an authentic, independent and emotional connection to the music. Classic sits comfortably with cutting edge, with quality and integrity being constant.”

This could be a slight problem for our music magazine idea, in that it would be professionally written, grown up and “with quality and integrity being constant”.  However, our magazine would be weekly, permanently travel sized and focus a bit more on current and future music rather than classics.

Their reader base is a 77:23 split on gender (male:female) and they retail at £4.50 per issue.

Next up is Q magazine (chosen because a] The original title was “Cue”, as in “queuing up a song” but was changed so that it wasn’t confused as a snooker mag and b] A single letter title stands out on store shelves).  It boasts to be the UK’s biggest selling monthly music magazine, however it’s sales figures are, on average, less than its sister magazine Mojo (average circulation: 80,418).

Q “is the arbiter of quality music. The magazine sits at the heart of a cross-platform brand that discovers great music of substance for its consumers. The Q brand has developed a worldwide reputation as a trusted and premium quality voice of musical authority amongst fans, musicians and the music industry alike - one that is founded upon Q's unrivalled access, world-beating exclusives and outstanding production values.”

Q is not specific to any one kind of genre of music.  It’s a magazine where Metallica, Coldplay and Katy Perry can share equal space on the front cover and be treated with the same amount of appreciation for their genres.  This is kind of what we are going for with our music magazine.  However, their photography is some of the best in the industry and very expensive.  If we are to keep costs down, we’re going to have to sacrifice some of that quality.  However, we are going to be a weekly magazine rather than a monthly one, so we should be capable of filling a gap in the Q shaped market.

Their gender audience share is a 75:25 split (male:female) and their magazine retails at £3.99 an issue.

Bauer Media’s final music magazine is Kerrang!  Kerrang, “is the world's biggest selling weekly music magazine and the original multi-platform youth brand for all rock genres. Kerrang delivers the hottest news, reviews, gig guides, exclusive features, posters, videos and more every week. In print, on TV, radio and online, Kerrang lives life loud for its army of dedicated, music loving fans.”

Unlike the previous two magazines, Kerrang! is a specialist music mag, dedicated to rock and metal.  Also unlike the previous two magazines, Kerrang! is a weekly magazine.  As such, its average circulation (43,033) and its price (£2.20) are significantly lower than Uncut and Q.  However, these are the sorts of targets that our magazine should stick to.  It would be unreasonable for a weekly music magazine to average 80,000 copies sold per issue.  Mid 40,000’s would be a good target.  Plus, our magazine will not be a specialist, so it's more likely to appeal to a broader range of people.  Hopefully, with such a gap in Bauer Media's market, our magazine will be attractive to them.

Their gender audience share is not classified but, according to the website their audience aged from 15 to 35 and are mostly male (although, again, no statistics were given to support this).

All three magazines offer a subscription and special discounts for subscribing.  Q has a yearly subscription price of £35 for 12 issues with the first 12 only costing £13.20.  Post intial offer, this is a 27% discount on buying them individually from a store.  Subscriptions (single issue or otherwise) make up 30% of the average sales of every issue (24,096).

Mojo has two subscription offers.  The first is monthly and costs £2.50 a month (saving 44%); the second is annual and costs £40.00 (saving 26%).  Subscriptions make up 23% of the sales of each magazine (20,266).

Kerrang! has two subscription offers.  The first is monthly (with four issues) and costs £6.50 (introductory offer: £2.20 for the first four issues) per month (saving of 34%).  The second is yearly and costs £90.00 a year (saving of 20%).  Subscriptions make up 14.6% of the sales of each magazine (6,322).

This means that, for a high quality, high end and professional magazine; if we want to include a subscription offer, we may not want to be a weekly magazine.  There's not enough gain from it and if people enjoy the magazine, they'll probably find it easier just to buy it in stores weekly.  We should probably consider expanding our release window to, possibly bi-weekly.  However, we'll leave that up to our survey to decide.

Quotes taken directly from Bauer Media UK’s website.  Sales figures taken from official certification on ABC.

Both: Initial Ideas For Magazine

Our magazine will be a multi-genre, professional quality magazine featuring a mix of cutting edge and classic music. Its target audience will be affluent 24 - 30 year olds, who have an enthusiastic taste in music. Although it will be a unisex magazine, there will be a slight male bias as there is most of the popular music magazines.

The magazine will be an A5 compact magazine when printed, and will have a maximum page count of 50 pages, filled with features that everyone will want to read. It will cut most of the more niche, lesser quality articles that you usually skip in music magazines, and this will also cut costs. It is partly influenced by the sucess of i newspaper, which is thin and only contains the main articles.

Because it is a quality magazine, it will be printed on good quality glossy paper.It will also scream 'proffesionalism' and there will be no tabloidy, sensationalist writing.

The sell line will either be: 'For Serious Music Lovers' or 'No compromise' and the title will be 'alpha.' in lower case, with a full stop at the end and the Greek Alpha symbol replacing the A's. We haven't yet decided on the frequency of the magazine, but we will ask this in the questionnaire. 

Some features will include:
- A double spread page of album reviews. The main album will be on one side with a large picture on it too, and 8 more much shorter reviews will be fitted on the other side.
This week in [genre], which will span several features.

As a note, We have banned the colour red from the colour scheme of magazine cover, because it is used in so many other magazines. Most of the colours on the front cover will be monochromatic and neutrals - which look sophisticated - but we will have one bright colour used too.

Callum: My issue will be the Christmas edition.  My front cover image will contain a collage of album covers from 2011 that leads to my main feature on the 50 Best Albums & Tracks Of The Year.  Since we are changing the colour of our logo each issue (something the latest run of NME's have managed to successfully pull off), mine will be gold which reflects the festive period.  On the contents page, there will be an image from a photo shoot that will contain three models representing three members of a band (guitarist, bassist, vocalist) frozen by camera shot mid "song" whilst playing their instruments.  This, and the 50 Best Albums & Tracks feature, will be the only two non-regular features included in this issue due to the severe length of the 50 Best Albums & Tracks feature.  To help make up the space, the image used on the inside, from the photoshoot will be quite large.  Finally, my double page spread will be an extract from the 50 Best Albums & Tracks feature.

Chad: My issue will be the June edition. This means that my issue can be a Music Festival Special, and can feature little guides on every festival, tips on each festivals, music from each band thats playing etc... My logo will mostly green, but perhaps with a white outline. The rest of the colours used on the front cover will be those from our house style, which will be monochromatic and neutral, apart from perhaps some other uses of green. My contents page will feature a large atmospheric festival photo which suits the festival theme. My double page spread will be a spread reviewing the albums of the festival acts playing.

Chad: Similar Product Research: Mojo Magazine

 

December 2001

Mojo magazine uses a black, white and red colour scheme on every single issue. However the usages of the colors are rotated each month. They possibly use a red, black and white colour scheme because it is somewhat established and stands out. The black and whiteness of the photo also fits with how aged the photo of Michael Jackson is. Other popular magazines that include a black, white and red colour scheme in there house style include Q, and NME. 

Mojo has a white, bold, slightly playful spaced out Masthead. Like Clash, there is a red bar at the top with some extra cover stories and a picture. This highlights some more stories and separates them from the main story. Mojo has a sell line ("The Music Magazine")which is designed to look like it has been handwritten. The connotations of a fancy, handwritten font are that perhaps the magazine wants you to believe that real people agree that it is The music magazine, and it isn't just the company trying to sell you something - even though it is. The magazine seems to cater to all genres, which could be because it wants to make its target audience as large and as diverse as possible, or because it knows people do not just listen to one genre unless they are extremely narrow minded.

The picture of the magazine fills most of the front cover, leaving no blank space, and there are relatively few cover stories on it, the main one being about the rise and fall of Michael Jackson. His name is in a white, grungey, printed style font which also seems quite retro. The tone seems quite professional, and there is no sensational writing. All of the text is on top of the Michael Jackson portrait, which could be to make the magazine seem more important than he is. The shot of Michael Jackson seems to be a smiley, press shot from the 60's, which was the peak of his career.

From this magazine we will use the technique of rotating colours each month; the simple sell line; the slightly more mature target audience; the multi-genre nature of the magazine; and the professional tone

Chad: Similar Product Research: Clash Magazine

Issue 42

Issue 42 of Clash magazine uses an incredibly simple colour scheme of monochromes and gold. This is probably because it suggests the cover star (Jay-Z) exuding opulence, as gold and silver both have connotations of precious metals, and of being very expensive. This also ties in with the fact that Jay-Z is one one of the richest musicians/ producers in America, plus it suits his dark skin tone much more than it would suit pale skin. In addition, it makes the magazine seem much more mature and stylish compared with if it had been full of bright colours. It does seem rather masculine though, but, now I think of it, a lot of major music magazines do.

There is a white magazine logo masthead in the top left corner of the magazine. The magazine title is is a curvy, modern, sans serif font that is similar to all the other text other than it being more curvy, bigger and more stylized. There is a bar at the top with some an extra cover story on. All of this is the house style - the colours, content, and cover star change every issue.

Whereas on most music magazines, the cover stories take up and fill most of the blank space, on Clash the portrait does, which is unconventional.The cover stories that are there have headings that are bold, to add emphasis. The tone is slightly sensational ('Reveals All!'), and they use exclamation marks a little too readily, to make it seem exciting! Hmmm...

All of the text is on top of the moody close-up of Jay-Z which is conventional, and is possibly to show that the magazine is more important than him - or it could just be to make everything seem simpler, and more organized. The fact that he is in a moody pose makes him seem a lot more serious, powerful and masculine.

The magazine does not seem to focus one genre, as it features both a hip-hop modern megastar - Jay-Z, but refers to a Classic pop band - The Beatles. This could be to have as wide a target audience as possible, or because it is trying to cater to an audience who are mature enough to have listened to the Beatles, but who also like to keep up with new music too.

From this magazine, we might use a similar simple colour scheme; a similar simple logo; modern sans serif typefaces;  the usage of boldness to emphasise stories; and the multi-genre focus.

Callum: Similar Product Research: NME

 February 21st 2011 Edition

This NME features the redesigned house style that the magazine recently adopted.  For example, the masthead is no longer red with a white inline.  The font is Sans Serif and each issue it rotates colours (white, blue, pink etc.) with this issue being white.  The new style makes the magazine seem more grown-up, important and less tabloid-y; possibly in an attempt to recapture the readers it has slowly been shedding over the past few years.

The colours that grace this front cover are purple and white, which fit the new house style and easily separate the headlines from the strap lines.  The text of the entire front cover is entirely in a Sans Serif font.  However, the cover story is italicised for emphasis (plus the Graham Coxon quote).  This continues the newly professional layout of the magazine.

The barcode is in the bottom right hand corner with the price and date included on it to keep it from clashing with the rest of the magazine's front cover.  The price and date are reposted in the top left hand corner of the cover above the logo, however their size is much smaller than the logo.  This makes it very easy for the customer purchasing the magazine to know at a glance whether or not they're picking up the latest edition.

Parts of the logo and sell line (New Musical Express) are obscured in the picture by the band in the shoot (the photo overlaying the logo and sell line).  This assumes that the reader is familiar with the brand of NME (seeing as they've been around since the 50s) and shows how important the band on the front cover are (seeing as the are important enough to block most of the magazine's identity).

The mode of address is very informal and sensationalist.  “Graham Coxon spills all” and using quotes pulled directly from the articles without any context to them, for example.  Regardless, they definitely do attract the reader's attention and it definitely interests those who want every single bit of gossip on their favourite band.

The cover has very little blank space with text and stories taking up just about every possible space.  This can cause three impressions.  1] That the magazine is fit to burst with stories and content, enticing the reader into believing £2.30 for a weekly magazine is value for money.  2] It's professionally laid out so that only one major story overpowers the others.  Or 3] Some may think it looks a bit too cluttered and messy and possibly too text heavy.

(note: The outer white line does not appear on the actual cover.  I know.  I own that issue.)

From analysing this cover, we will take from it the ideas of  using italics to emphasise stories; and the newly mature tone.