Analysing music magazine contents pages:

Analysing contents pages: Mixmag

Who is the target audience of this text and how can you tell?


- Target audience is for over 18’s because of the content being club orientated.

- The target audience looks like it will be mainly for males because of the colour scheme and the main image of the contents page is a woman with some cleavage out.

- The content of the magazine is quite party orientated and there is a lot of emphasis on clubbing.

Types of artists/features included?

- All the artists included are all dubstep, dance, electro, techno or drum n bass artists, and the CD give away is a dance music DJ ‘Riva Starr’. All the artists on the front of the magazine are give aways of the genre of the magazine, for example Deadmau5 and Chase and Status.

How the main cover lines are presented in contents page?

- There are no cover lines on the front of the magazine, it’s just photos of dance and dubstep artists

Layout

- Just black and white and yellow, very limited use of colour other than on the images, so that they are emphasised?

- It is simple, readable and ordered.

Analysis of contents pages: Top of the Pops

Who is the target audience of this text and how can you tell?

- The target audience is ages 10-14 and very obviously aimed at females due to the features such as ‘We heart boys’ and all the language inside that is focused around boys and boyfriends, it’s all even highlighted in yellow to stand out against all the other features.

- The images are all of shopping; make up or boy bands and other female celebrities.

Types of artists/features included?

- One direction, Lady Gaga, Pixie Lott, JLS, Justin Bieber, Nicola Roberts and Jason Derulo.

How the main cover lines are presented in contents page?

- The cover lines are presented by having a print screen of the front cover and then annotations of it as well as a few cover lines broken down into sub-headed sections.

- The main front cover line is about One Direction, however there isn’t a main feature for them inside, they’re just integrated into all the other features.

- Only a few of the cover lines are music related, others are about fashion and boys.

- Organised by genre, i.e. fashion, wins and offers, music etc.

Layout

- The fonts are all quite curly and girly, and the main title of the page is in a handwritten font, suggesting connotations of the target audience being for younger people.

- The colour scheme is very strict of mainly pink, white and black with a few yellow elements; however the main overall colour is pink.



Conventions of contents pages:

- Editors letter will be from a knowledgeable narrative voice must be good.

- Image supported with text. Cover line to link story – teaser/taster.

- Main features emphasised and normally at the top of the page, descending in order of importance and normally going downwards on the page. Some however are quite ‘random’ in prioritising features and the features are sometimes spontaneously scattered.

Mock up of Contents page for school magazine:

This is a mock up of what my contents page would look like. I have used the same colour schemes on my front cover and included some more images that are related to my cover lines and the theme of the magazine.

How it relates to codes and conventions of other magazines:I have seperated my contents into sub genres, because after looking at codes and conventions of magazines I discovered that it is a technique used regularly. I have also included a rough template of where I would include an editors letter, because it is something that is used often in other magazines as well.

I've made sure that there are images in my contents page however if I had done a finished version I would of included more.

I tried to make sure that the contents page looks like it belongs with my front cover and that the style is consistent. I've done this by using a regular colour scheme and similar fonts and font styles, including shadows and font engraves.

First draft of my front cover:

This is the first draft of my school magazine front cover. I kept a simple colour scheme of blue's, white's, grey's and black's because I think that they complimented well with the photograph as well as blue being the predominant school colour. I used the responses of my questionnaires to create the sell lines and used some of the suggestions such as 'use the school logo'. I also used the responses to create a price for my magazine which I put as 85 pence.

Reader profile

From my survey responses, in order to create a succesful school magazine front cover I have created a reader profile, which is who my magazine will be aimed at.
I intended my audience to be both male and female, however the majority were female, so I am going to make a more feminine design.
Here is what I have constructed as my reader profile for my school magazine through my responses to my survey:



 I've used in my reader profile:
-Going shopping
-Social networking such as Facebook, twitter, tumblr and also youtube.
-Fast food and junk food
-Popular music such as Bombay Bicycle Club
-Fashion related things, such as shops and magazines
-School related items, including sports and socialising.
-Make up
-Television programmes including XFactor and MTV

-Mobile phones and other technology
-Festivals and gigs

Taking photographs for Front Cover

These are all the pictures I took when experimenting for my front cover image, I then chose these three, the three I liked best and thought would look best on the front of my magazine:

I then chose a few of the pictures that I liked the most and decided to subtly edit them in the computer program Fireworks. I didn't want to edit the pictures too much, however I cropped them down, changed the colour settings and the brightness and contrast of the pictures so that they would look more professional and appealing. This is the picture I liked the most, and below is a before and after shot of it.

This is the photograph I am probably going to use for my front cover.

Response Summery

These are the results that I achieved from my Survey on Surveymonkey:

I started off by asking if the people I was asking already had a school or college magazine to help me think about everything I would need to put in it and what people would expect. Everybody that I asked said no.

I then asked if anybody would be willing to purchase it and if so, the prices they would be willing to pay. 61.5% said yes, so I will be putting a price on the magazine of between.

I asked how much they would be willing to pay, and as I expected the majority, 69.2% said they would pay the least amount possible so I will be adding a price to the front of my magazine ranging from £0.70 - £1.00. I think that if students would be paying for the magazine then I need to make the content helpful and make sure that they would gain something from reading it.

The majority thought that the content of the magazine should be more varied and not just school related so I will need to add a range of different topics to appeal to everyone in the magazine.

I then asked for examples of what everyone would like to see and I got a range of replies saying
- Local events, school events and help,
- Information about after school clubs and catch up sessions,
- Help, advice and facts,
- Gigs, fashion section,
- School information and local event dates,
- and exam dates and rules.
These are a few of the responses that I got.
I will probably use the majority of these in my magazine, and make sure I definitely include the suggestions that came up more than once such as 'help' and 'local events'.

I asked whether they thought it would be beneficial for students and although I got more 'yes' responses I also received a large amount of 'no's', therefore I will need to make sure the magazine would look as though it would be appealing for the targeted audience.

This was the task that I knew I would find most difficult in the production of my school magazine, so I asked the question in my survey for some suggestions. The majority of the responses gave basic names so I think that I will use a simple, recognisable name for the masthead such as 'FSG Monthly' or 'FSG News'. These were also 2 that were suggested. I also wanted to make sure that the name of the magazine was something that sounded relatively academic and less like a gossip magazine so I think that these names would be well suited.

When asking this question, I knew that I wanted the magazine to be distributed monthly however I wanted to make sure if this was what everyone else would also want. 84.6% responses also agreed that monthly would be the best to distribute so this is what I am going to do.

I asked people out of a few suggestions of mine what they would want to see in the magazine exactly. I thought that these would be the topics I would be using mainly however after the suggestions I had in one of my previous questions I have changed my mind and decided to add in 'help' topics and 'academic news'.

My final question was just asking if anyone had any other suggestions towards my magazine and the responses were not that helpful, however I did get one response suggesting that I use the school logo on my magazine, so I think that I will do that.

Overall, my responses were very helpful and have helped me decide on what I want my school magazine to look like and what the sell lines should be etc.

School magazine planning - survey

I have started the research for my school magazine by creating a survey using the internet programme http://www.surveymonkey.com.
I am using the survey to find out about various peoples interest in the magazine and what topics they would like to see etc.
The questions that I have included in my survey are:
1.Do you currently have a school or college magazine?
2.If you were provided with a school magazine, would you be willing to purchase it?
3.If so, how much would you be willing to pay for one?
4.Do you think that the content of the school magazine should be purely school related?
5.What exactly would you like the content of a school magazine to be?
6.Do you think that it would be beneficial for students?
7.What do you think a suitable name would be for the magazine?
8.How often would you like the magazine to be updated and distributed?
9.Out of these categories, which of these three would you like to see most?
10.Do you have any other comments or suggestions?

I distributed the survey to pupils of my school varying in ages to get a range of different results.