My Magazine.

I am now ready to create my own magazine. I will decide on the genre and target audience.
From my research I have found that all front covers of magazines have the same conventions: masthead, striking photograph/s, plugs and sub headings. Therefore I will include these in my magazine.

I have also discovered that all magazines have ideological colours and images that run throughout the magazine. This helps support the genre and allows the genre to run througout the magazine.
For example.
The image to the right is a snippet taken from music magazine "Metal Hammer". The specialise in reveiwing the latest metal muisc, hense the name Metal Hammer. Their colour scheme is black and white, with a splash of a different dark colour, usually red, purple, blue or green. Another element that runs throughout it is the sarcastic quotes (that some poeple may find funny) like "Goth, shadow sandwitches?" Comments like these are also used throughout and have beacome a sub convention of this specific magazine.

My chosen music genre will be current contemporay music, including rock, jazz, drum and bass, blues, pop and folk.But I will be focusing on new bands that want to make a name for themselves. Each new musician can bring something different to the music industry, but only a few have the chance to become famous and well knwon worldwide. The aim of my magazine will be to give new musicians a voice so they can show their talents and love of music to people it will appeal too. But my target audience will be females, as I belive males still dominate the music industry and its about time women had a fair share. There are currently magazines on the market that are similar to the one I want to create, Neu! Magazine, ONE WAY and Music-Zine. I am now going to analyse two of these magazines, One way and Music-Zine, so i can understand their house-styles, genre, media language, representation, ideology audience and institution.

"Gramaphone magazine"

Fig2. Gramophone - established in 1923 and has grown up alongside the classical music industry. Known as the greatest classical music magazine worldwide.
Genre: The musical genre's represented in this magazine are classical. The stylistic features help us identify the genre.These are the masthead, the colours used and the type of photograph used. Like in this example all the colour are complimentary. The golden/green colour of the ladys dress is reflected in the masthead and the plugs. The typical content of the magazine, written in formal language, is interveiws with famous musicians...
Target audience is middle aged to older people, as they are stereotypically the type of people who would listen to classical music. Also this magazine will be aimed at middle/ upper class, the type of people who attend the theatre/opera. The rich golden colours used on this front page give it an upper class look along with the way the classy looking woman is positioned on the fancy staircase.

I also have a double page spread from this magazine. This page consists of one large photo, and two smaller ones. The text is in 4 colums around the images. This is layed out so the audience can read it easily. I like the pale blue background, it is better then just haveing a plain white background as it makes the text stand out more and fits with the colour scheme.