Aims and Introductions

Aims and Introductions

After gathering information from my questionnaire (based on target audience) I gained a greater understanding of what people, aged between 14-18, want from the music magazine I am designing. Twelve out of the twenty people that answered my questionnaire were male; this does make it slightly biased. However it will not be too biased, which is a good thing because it means my questionnaire will be accurate for the majority. 

The age group I have chosen does however mean the magazine will have to be reasonably cheap and affordable.  The people that answered my questionnaire said they would be willing to pay between one and two pounds. I think this is a reasonable price for a magazine.

I looked at lots of different magazines to help me come up with a design for my magazine. I looked at different genres as I thought this would allow me to get a wide range of ideas; I looked at magazine such as Top of the Pops, Kerrang, NME and Rolling Stones. These magazines all use different colour schemes as well as using different layouts. This research gave me a wide range of possibilities to explore when creating my own magazine. The one I found most useful had to be Top of the Pops as it was relevant to my genre and my target audience. My magazine is also like Top of the Pops as it focuses on Chart music and the bigger names in the music industry.  This means my cover lines will be related to the charts and other big Pop artists. My main cover line is going to be about an artist’s raise to fame.

On my front cover I want to have a large central image of the artist in my main cover line. They will be standing in front of a white background. On the contents page I want to have a picture of a party or a gig, as I think this will be relevant and exciting. I will be using a photo of either a single male or a group of males as I am unsure if I want to focus on a single artist or an entire band. I want the model to be wearing popular and stylish clothes, such as chinos as these are very common among Pop artists. I want the white background for the photo on the front cover as this makes the image very pure it also means the colours will contrast and stand out.

My Front cover is going to be laid out in a quite an organised busy layout as I am going to have text surrounding the image but I am also going to have the cover lines in two neat columns, so although the page will be busy it will be laid out professionally. I think this will really appeal to my teenage audience as there is a lot to look at whilst still remaining mature.

My Contents page will be of a similar layout however, the text is going to be above and to the right of the image. This is because the image of the party/gig will not be central. I chose to do this because I wanted the contents page to have a different layout from the front cover, whilst still showing similarities.

My double page spread will have an entire page taken up by an image of the artist/band, with quotes from the artist/band scattered over the picture at random points. The other page will have questions and responses; I want this to be laid out in the formal and professional way of two columns running down the page. I am considering including some small image in the very centre of the page to break the text up a bit and make it look less heavy. This will be more fitting for the target audience.

I have chosen the title ‘Speed of Sound’ for my magazine as I thought including the word sound has a clear link to music. I also thought that the use of the word sound shows that the magazine quickly informs you about the latest music news.