Magazine Analysis-MixMag. Inside

Inside
In MixMag magazine, the magazine contains 130 pages, in which 33 pages are for the advertisements. I have analysed the magazine fully and have listed below each part of advertisements in the magazine:

• Travelling-1 page
• Clothes and footwear-15 pages
• Music/Concerts-17 pages

Within the magazine, there are a number of 31 double page spreads. These pages include things like clothing, bands and interviews and footwear.

The layout within the magazine is very clear and this is an advantage towards "MixMag" as the customer/readers will not get confused about whether the pages are advertisements or articles.

Magazine Analysis-MixMag, The Cover

The cover
The title "MixMag" was named after the genre of the music the magazine is looking for. The target audience are those who go out clubbing and spend their nights out, clubbing and/or listening to dub step (etc) kind of music. The word "Mix" comes from the clubbing scene, how they mix their songs together to make a good beat to dance to, and the short term of "Mag" stands for magazine. This makes it contrast my other magazine of "Kerrang" as the genre of music is completely different, making MixMag a unqiue magazine.

The masthead of the magazine on the front cover has been printed in a neon orange colour, allowing the text to stand out when on the shelf, and to make more customers pick it up, have a look and buy it. The text used is a sans-serif font, meaning that it looks beneifical and more outstanding compared to serif fonts, like "Times New Roman" etc.The "i" on the word mix has been editted so the dot above the letter I has a outline around it, meaning that it could link to the dj mixer, relating to the clubs and the point of the magazine.

There is a strap line in the magazine of "MixMag" and it states about the magazine in a short term. The sentence "The world's biggest dance music and clubbing magazine." This is a advantage to the magazine as it tells the reader about what the magazine offers, so this saves the customer from having to read and search for what the magazine includes.

The main image includes a DJ in a club full of people, but however the head of the DJ has been changed and editted so that the head of the person is "Mickey Mouse." The body language shows a happy expression, with his right hand in the air, showing he may be enjoying the music or atmosphere. The photograph relates throughout the magazine, as the magazines target audience are those who want to find out about night-life activities and the club genre of music.

By simply looking at the magazine, it is easy to see what subject it is based on. This makes the magazine look unique and stand out from the other articles, especially with the neon coloured texts.

Magazine Analysis-MixMag, General

General
Looking at the second magazine to analyse, I see bright colours and standing out text. The company in which works on publishing the magazine is called "Development Hell Limited," and their website is: http://developmenthell.co.uk/.
According to the magazines website of: www.mixmag.net, I have found that the target audience for Mix-Mag magazine are for people who enjoy dancing or going out clubbing and socialising.

Other genres the magazine looks to are house, trance, hard dance, dub step, techno, drum 'n' bass, experimental, breaks and urban.

The magazine comes complete with a CD each issue, with clubbing music on which they feel their readers would enjoy, listen to and make them "dance." It also includes clothing advertisements, but mainly on the cover shows neon coloured text in orange trying to attract the reader with the bright titles and sub headings.

The magazine itself costs the reader £4.20 and shares the slogan "Look Good on the Dance floor," giving the customers/readers something to wear and places to go on nights out. Although the price is more expensive than the Kerrang Magazine which I annotated, the magazine is monthly, where the reader could receive 12 each year. the circulation of the whole magazine yearly is around £26,112.

Magazine Analysis. Kerrang, the Cover

The cover
The magazine has been given the title of “Kerrang.” The name was given to the magazine to emphasis the noise of smashing an electric guitar, showing the onomatopoeia, to symbolise the type of music like rock, heavy metal etc. This is a effective way to name a magazine as it not only relates to the genre of music the magazine publishes, but also gives a sound which attracts the customers attention when the name is said.

The kerrang logo is stated fully across the page from left to right along the top. It has been clearly designed in bold capital letters, with an exclamation mark at the end of the word to emphasis the title. For the effects, the word seems battered and worn, to give the “rebellious” strike through. The masthead symbolizes the magazine and identifies this to the customer, and the logo of Kerrang has been inputted throughout the magazine.

Looking at the cover, all the texts share the same effect of the battered and worn effect, which can relate to hard rock music genres. Lines through the word imply the font to shatter the image so it stands out more to the target audience.

A strap line is the bold font above the title of the magazine, showing a slogan or a small line of what is in the magazine. Relating to “Kerrang,” the editors have produced the strap-line to outstand the information, to capture the reader’s attention and to add more relevance. Kerrang has used the line “The damned things get ready to invade!: “We want to do everything!” This line does not only want to make you read the article, but it also makes you think what it could be about, and makes you want to find the article.

The main image on the front cover of the magazine shows the women, Hayley Williams from “Paramore.” Her body is covered up by story lines but however her face stands out, as its written over the logo, but the customers can still clearly see what the magazines called, by viewing the overall outlook of the magazine, and the house style.

Hayley Williams herself is looking straight at the camera, but is winking. Her head is tilted to the right, which gives a larger effect and insight, rather than a straight on picture. Her clothing includes a rock look, with a grey vest top and jeans.

The other photographs, which appear on the cover, represent other bands that have been placed inside the magazine. These bands include “Bring me the Horizon,” “30 seconds to mars,” “My Chemical Romance” and “Rage against the machine.” Also placed on the cover apart from the large image of Hayley Williams are other photographs of the band of Paramore. Other images of other bands have been placed onto the cover as well as Paramore so the customer can tell what’s in the magazine without opening the pages, which is beneficial.
The main content of the cover lines, which is promoted, is Paramore. However, other cover lines include free gifts, holidays, posters etc.

Magazine Analysis. Kerrang, Inside

Inside
there are 64 pages altogether and 18 pages of these are adverts within magazine. Below shows each section of the magazine, and how many numbers there are:
TV program advertisement-1 page

• Trip offers-1 page
• Concerts-9 pages
• Subscription Page-3 pages
• New music albums or songs-2 pages

Clothing available for purchase-2 pages There are 12 pages, which are double spreads. These include:
“Highway to health”-Angela Gossow
“Stone Sour”-Band Interview
"Parkway Drive"-Live bands information
2 double page spreads on "Paramore"
"Screaming for vengeance"-Marily Manson
"The damned united"-band
The other pages consist of concert tickets, album and song charts, and advertisements.
Although there are 18 pages of adverts within a 64 page magazine, there are a few pages which may cause confusion to whether it is a article of advertisement. An example of this would be on pages 8 and 9. This made me ponder whether it should be counted as a article or magazine. There are similar to other pages throughout the magazine, like the concerts and offers to win a holiday etc, as it can get confusing whether its advertising or not.
I think that the magazine has achieved a unique house style with colour schemes as all the header text and style have been used and not changed throughout. The magazine most definitely suits the target audience, with rock and heavy metal types of genre.

The colour scheme works for all the magazine, as they have used dark colours, especially primary colours like red, yellow and blue.

Magazine Analysis. Kerrang, General

General

The editors of the magazine were from “K! Office” but however the producers were “Bauer”, which is a small private company, which publishes magazines for Europe, publishing in Germany, France, Spain, Portugal and the United Kingdom, and additionally the United States and Mexico. The company “Bauer” has expanded over the years and publishes all types and sorts of different magazines, which are widely brought within the economies. Some of these magazines include: Women’s Weekly, Women’s Interest, Women’s Lifestyle, TV Listings, Puzzles, Men’s Lifestyle, Music & Film and Specialist magazine markets.
Looking on the website of www.kerrang.com, I feel that the target audience depends on the genre of music the consumer listens to. However, the website states that the target audience that the magazine readers are aimed at, are people that listen to: rock, Goth, punk, thrash, classic indie and unsigned bands. When looking on “Bauer” website, I found that the target audience depend on “independence of thought who are musically experienced, so the magazine can reach out to an audience defined by attitude, passion and loyalty.”
The weekly magazine itself costs the customer £2.20, and comes complete with a page spread, 4 free posters and is given in a plastic pouch, so no sheets will be lost or fall out.
The magazine used to be published monthly when it first started, but due to a larger target audience, the magazine then got to be released fortnightly, and now is published weekly, so the customers can all receive a frequent update of their favourite bands.

The Preliminary Task-Contents Page

With lots of modification and changing words, fonts, colours and styles, this is my final contents page. I started of by creating the background colour so that it matched with the school logo badge, which meant that the house style and colour scheme would relate to the front cover. Then, using the text tool, I wrote the title of WGSB contents, so that the WGSB part matched with the school, but still entered contents so the user knows what page they were on. I then had to add effects, and i added the outer glow, shadowing and changed the colour, to make the title stand out clearly. Next, I had to equally divide the page into three, so that I could have three columns worth of information as well as lots of space. I draw these out using the retangle tool icon, and to ensure they were equal, I used a ruler. I then had to think about the colour, and first i changed it to gold so that it matched the title and background, as well as the school. However, I then didnt feel that this worked, so I started to play around with other colours. After quite a bit of searching, I finally came up with the idea to design just a light blue colour so i could write over with the text in gold and the page numbers in white, which i thought worked well due to the contrast of colours, meaning they would stand out of the page. Although i had sorted out the colours, i had to sort out the font, however this was the tricky part because the font modifies the whole page. I started out with fonts like Arial, Comic Sans etc, sans-serif fonts as i thought they looked good for advertisements, and made them bold. However, these fonts didnt go with the fonts i had used on the front page, as they looked slightly more soft, whereas the front page fonts looked edgy and strong. To overcome this, i decided on using the same font like "Edo" which gave it a edge but at the same time looked professional and would want to make the customer read the list, and turned the font to gold to relate to the badge. The last step i had to take about the writing, was to change the page list to another colour to stand out clearer. I tried blue, but reliased it didnt stand out as it was nearly the same colour as the background, then i changed all the colours round, but finally came up with white as it contrasted most. To finish the contents page, the last step i had to take was to add the photographs to the page, to make them stand out and give the readers a insight for what to expect inside the magazine. In the bottom left hand corner, i chose one of the photographs which i was going to choose for my front cover but couldnt as it was landscape, but however i thought this would look benefical on the contents page. The other photograph added was to the top right hand corner, and this was sixth form students. The photo shows a insight to the school, as well as sixth form students working which gives an advantage to the magazine.

My Complete Front Cover

Above shows my final cover in which I have used for my Preliminary Task. After finally choosing my photograph in which I was going to use, I cut out the boys and the desk, and set it onto a plain white background. I then started out creating a blue gradient background, as I planned to use gold text, so that both colours related to the school logo at Wilmington Boys. However, once I had done so, I realised that I needed to add the school logo to the cover, as otherwise the magazine could relate to any school. Doing this, I added the logo, changed the opacity and enlarged it, so that it faded slightly into the background, but both the logo and colour was still able to be seen. Next, I had to create the main header text, which included choosing the title of the magazine then choosing the colour scheme, font and effects. Ifinally came up with the idea of WGSB news, so the school would know it was relevant to them, filled with gossip and competitions. To create the title, I used the font of "Times New Roman," colouring it gold so it related to the Wilmington Grammar for Boys school badge, before editing it so it stood out using the effects available on photo shop. Once I had added the gradient, photo and the title of the magazine together, it started to come to life but I needed to do something about the photographs, as where I had cut round them using the magic wand and they had a slight white curve around them both. To overcome this, I added a drop shadow to the photograph and chose the colour to black, meaning that it would give them a effect as well as getting rid of the white line which did not look right. Next was choosing the sub-headings, which included me looking at different types of colours and fonts. I decided on choosing the magazine to be published doing the May time of the year, as it was before the exams so I could relate to that, which I then thought I could use for the cover stories. However, once I had come up with the relevant stories, the fonts didn't suit the magazine colour scheme etc. Therefore, I had to try and test out other fonts until i came up with "Edo" meaning that the font gave the writing a slight edge and was written in capitals, which was a advantage to the magazine and made it stand out. I then tested out different effects and ways in which the text could stand out more, until I was satisfied. lastly, the final objective I had to complete was to make the words "INSIDE!" and "PLUS!" stand out more than the sub-headings, which I completed by enlarging the font, before changing the colour of the text "worried" to give it more effect.

Three Final Photos For My Front Cover

Before choosing my final photograph to use for my front cover of the Preliminary task, I had to choose out of the three photographs shown below. However, I found problems with the other two in which I did not choose.
Photograph One
I thought this photograph in the science lab was really effective when I took it, as it shows interest in the subject, and I captured the experiment in the moment. However, to my mistake I only took one photograph of this at one angle, and when I converted it to the computer, I realised that the photograph was landscape, rather than portrait so I was unable to use this. However, I still used this photo for my contents page as it was relevant and looked effective and useful.





Photograph Two
When taking photo's, I aimed to capture moments of students working, or helping others. However, after realising that I could not use photograph number one, I wanted to use the photo shown on the left, but I was unable to use this photograph too. This was because, alike photograph One, I only captured this photo landscape and not portrait, which again made me look and take another photo.

Photograph Three-My Final Photo
After finding out that I could not use the above two photographs, I captured this moment, which symbolizes the subject in which i was looking for. The photograph shows happy emotions, whilst they are working and does not look fake or misleading. However, I did not remove the time stamp whilst takign the photographs, which meant when i uploaded this photo on the left, I had to use specific tools to remove the timing whilst trying not to ruin the photo. In conclusion, i successfully removed the time stamp, and used this photograph as my front cover of my magazine for my Preliminary Task.

Planning for Preliminary Task

Before taking the photographs for my front cover of my magazine, I had to plan it out and design it first of all.

Planning the Photo
Planning the photo was quite time consuming and difficult. To begin with, with taking photos, i just took a photograph of everything that i saw, which ended up to be good practice, but not useful for my Preliminary Task. I had to consider all sorts for getting the cover for the school magazine, including the angle in which I was going to take it and how many people I wanted in the photo, to see if it was going to be a group photo or a individual shot. I took photos of the most random things at the beginning, to try to get the technique, and to see how to properly take and work the camera, taking photos in different angles, shots and movements. However, when taking the main photos for the front cover of the magazine, I took all the wrong photos. I took long shots, close ups, medium shots, then realised that the Preliminary Task stated that I had to use a medium or a medium close up shot. I went through all my photos and realised I had problems with a lot of them, as they were either blurry, out of focus or my main problem was the fact that I had take photos landscape, rather than portrait. The angle of the camera which I had used to take the photos was mainly landscape, and I suddenly realised this when uploading the photographs to the computer, which meant that I had to go out and take more, to which I was then successful and took photographs which i could use effectively to my school magazine.

Thinking of a magazine name
Starting off designing my school magazine, I really had no idea about what to call it. I was thinking all names possible, including "Wilmington News" before realising that if I named my magazine that, it would include both the girls and boys school, but this could not be relevant as I chose a photo from Wilmington Boys, and included the Boys schools logo to my document. Similarly, I simply changed "Wilmington News" to "WGSB news" meaning that it linked and was more relevant to the boys school.

The month of the year I was going to use
Deciding the month in which I was going to use for my magazine, did really affect it a lot. This linked to the articles and the subtitles the front cover was to display, and effect the stories. I was close to choosing September, as being a start of a new year, I could have included the new year sevens, going into sixth form, and about starting a new year, but also December would have been a good month, due to the Christmas break up period. However, I realised that a few people were probably going to do these months and I wanted something different. I decided on the month of May, as it would be a unique month that not many would have chosen, and it let me include the Summer type months.

Designing the articles for the Magazine
Thinking of the occasions occurring in May, was a hard choice. I had to think of story lines to include for my magazine, and I thought that I could include stories just like the exams. I knew that this would be a large topic as all the years would be having their end of year exams, and the A-level and GCSE students would be taking very important exams, so to help them, i thought that maybe help with a study time table would be beneficial. other stories in which i chose to add included games and competitions, which allowed all years of the school to enter to and to take part in order to win prizes.