Kerrang!

First of all, on the front cover, the masthead is written right across the cover, :- “KERRANG”, on top of that there is the strapline saying, :- “ AVENGED SEVENFOLD’S THE REV R.I.P.+ TRIBUTE POSTER, along with a photograph of the person. For the cover photo, there’s a medium close-up picture of Ville Valo in the centre of the magazine with the headline on the right corner saying “Exclusive! “ I NEED REAL LIFE AS LITTLE AS POSSIBLE!” HIM INSIDE VILLE VALO’S SECRET WORLD. “, the picture is in place to firstly attract the customers and then they would read the biggest font that is printed on the front cover… which is the paragraphs about Ville Valo. There are then a few more cover lines on the front cover, such as “SOUNDGARDEN RETURN! THE FULL STORY!”, “PARAMORE FACE THEIR TOUGHEST QUESTIONS EVER!”, “HOLLYWOOD UNDEAD MASKED BERSERKERS ON THE RAMPAGE!” The magazine also has a lot of Boost and Puffs, such as: - “MEGA OMP! JOIN ENTER SHIKARI’S CREW!”, “POSTER SPECIAL!” Those are pretty helpful to attract customers as when magazines come with free poster, it is more likely to attract customers.
Overall, there are not many cover lines on the cover and there are only 3 pictures on total if the cover photo is counted in, I would say the layout of this magazine is okay but it doesn’t look professional, however, this might due to the fact that I am not into music like this, it does not attract me to purchase it, it has a niche target audiences.

Main Task- What Am I going to do?

For my main task, I am going to produce a front cover, a contents page and a middle spread for a music magazine. I am going to first look at the music magazines which are already out in the market, I am then going to produce some drafts for each of them and then choose the final one and put them together and evaluate the overall of my music magazine.

Analysis on my questionnaire

My Contents Page...

In my contents page I have made it very brief, it states the main titles in the magazine and I have added a few pictures and blended it into the background, as I don’t want to make the pictures too hard. The background colour is the same as the front cover and I have used a warmer coloured font.
Overall, it think that my contents page is layed out very clear and although it doesn’t look too fancy.

My Front Cover...

This is my front cover and as you can see it is named:- SHEB-LIFE… it is named SHEB-LIFE because I want to focus it on my target group which is the staff, students and parents. There is also the school crist next to it to show it is link to the college.
Everything is exactly the same as I have set out in the sketch however I have added a lot more pictures onto it to make it more interesting. I have made it clear to easy to look at and have not crowded it with a lot of words… I have just allow enough information for people to look at and I have asked a group of 1st formers to participate in my front cover picture.

Contents Page and Contents Page Analysis

Contents Page

The contents page is also one of the most important parts of a magazine, as it is the second thing that the reader see when they open the magazine, they first look at the front cover to judge a magazine then most of them would open to the contents page and look at the list of other pages of the magazine which direct audience to where they are interested in reading and whether it attracts them.

Contents Page Analysis

For this, I have got 2 magazines’ contents page to compare with.

First of all, this contents page really attracts me as a reader, it is just plain black but has been decorated with colourful pictures and it is based on white fonts, it has separated “features” and “regulars”, under each title there is a short explanation of what it is about, this shows the reader what they are going to be reading about and not just the title. The titles are not in straight line and it is all just slightly tipped to one side, this shows the magazine is not a formal magazine.

On the other hand, this magazine’s contents page layout is more formal, however, the font they are using looks like if it is aim for teen boys and it is more modern and all the pages are shown very clearly what it is going to be about, on the right hand side there are also pictures that links with the titles. There is a limited amount of information on the titles, and like the first magazine, there are different heading for each one, it is lay out very clearly as they separate the different topics. I think that this lay out is clear enough for people to read in a quite formal way.