Before I began creating my music magazine I analysed a series of professional music magazines in an attempt to understand the forms and conventions that they use. There are certain characteristics that can help a potential customer identify that they are looking at a music magazine, such as a strong brand identity. Given the rising popularity of music on television and on the Internet, magazines have been in decline in recent years, meaning that only the recognisable brands such ‘Q’ and ‘Kerrang’ have been able to survive. These magazines have strong, recognisable mastheads, so I chose an irregular font with a bright colour in an attempt to make the masthead stand out as in with ‘Q’ magazine.
The font I chose for my masthead is called ‘Urban Jungle’, which I downloaded off www.dafont.com. Given that the genre of my music magazine is urban, specialising in R&B, the use of an urban font connotes the sort of lives that the artists in this magazine may have lived, growing up in tough, urban areas. The title ‘Beats’ itself allows the reader to link to urban music, as well as the popular headphones of the same name, which many urban artists wear as they are designed by music legend Dr. Dre. Some examples of content that I use in my magazine are interviews and song reviews, which are very important features of any music magazine. After analysing various R&B magazines such as ‘Vibe’, I noticed that the colours that are used for the front cover are bright, contrasting colours, which is why I chose grey and bright blue to contrast against each other.
A large main picture on the front cover is also a common convention for music magazines, either as a close-up of a singer’s face or a picture of the artist in a set pose, which is the one I decided to do. Urban musicians tend to come from poor backgrounds and become very rich, so there is tendency for these artists to flaunt their expensive accessories. In order to connote this, my model is pictured wearing expensive glasses, a Rolex and a set of Dr.Dre style beats, as this a convention of an urban artists behavior. I also use a series of cover lines in order to draw the audience in to purchasing the magazine, as well as a puff to spike their interest. The titles of the cover lines are all puns or common phrases, giving the magazine a relaxed feel. I chose the font ‘Freshman’ for the text, as it gives the text an athletic, calm appearance.
A typical contents page features information on the content in the magazine, separating the content with the page numbers that the content falls on. Music magazines such as ‘Q’ feature an editorial from the main editor, a common convention where the editor talks directly to the reader about what they think of the issue. There is usually a small picture of the editor next to the text, something which I put in my magazine also. The contents page is also the first page in the magazine where the page number is shown, as magazines do not show the page number on the front cover. I have also kept the ‘Beats’ logo in an attempt to emphasis the brand identity, and have continued using the ‘Freshman’ font for the writing. The content of my magazine is shown in the contents page to be in groups such as reviews and competitions. Some magazines choose to spread the content instead of grouping it, but I decided to follow the example of magazines such as ‘Q’ and group the content through the magazine. The house brand colours of light blue, grey and black are continued from the front cover.
For the double-page spread I have chosen to do an interview of a music star, the most common convention of the main double-page spreads in music magazines. Again the font and colour scheme have been continued from the previous pages in order to promote the brand identity. The masthead is the largest font on the pages, a common convention of double-page spreads. The masthead title ‘D-MONEY drops by’ has an ambiguous meaning; firstly in the literal sense that he has come to do an interview, and secondly the use of the word ‘drops’ is a common urban music term which means to release a song. The use of a pun or ambiguous meaning title is another convention of music magazine titles. The tagline and opening paragraph keep the same font as the title to separate these from the rest of the text. For the interview itself I chose to use a more standard font so that it is simpler to read. The interview is split into columns which is also a common convention, along with with a link at the end of the interview to another part of the magazine to engage the reader.
