Research

As a music magazine reader myself I am very excited to start this project. As a consumer of the product I am trying to market the question I have to ask myself in order to design a good magazine front cover is what attracts us to music magazines? Is it the pictures? Or the font or logo? Or the persuasive language we sub-consciously are enticed by?

In order to be able to design and market a good magazine it is important for me to understand the key concepts and conventions of a music magazine. I will therefore be doing some research into the leading brands of music magazines in order to identify aspects that make then successful and appealing.

NME

These are just a few past NME front covers however from these few examples I am begining to see a clear theme and uniform to the brand. The covers are all very visual and have striking crisp pictures which our eyes are automatically drawn to. The pictures are fairly simple yet have an omnicent, powerful edge to them. The page is then full with lots of information in a varitey of house fonts. I notice that throughout the editions many font are the same or similar. It seems to me that NME almost has a make-up or uniform and its style is so distinct that before even seeing the logo you know that is NME. This is an effective and unquie selling point for the magazine and is arguable one of the many reasons it is so sucessful.

Another thing I have noticed circles are used to draw attention to competitions and bands which is intresting way to draw attention to certain aspects of the magazine.Also the front cover is ALWAYS taken by the feature act of the magazine and very often has small snippets of interesting, unique quotes from their interviews to entice readers.

Kerrang!

From also looking at "KERRANG!", another leading magazine brand the convetions of music magazines are becoming clearer. Similarly to NME the covers of Kerrang are very visual and are packed with information. In both magazines it is the name of the featured act which is biggest and clearest and again our attentions are draw straight to the act. Both magazines also appear to have simpled but effective logos which are memorable and unique and the way the sub headings are arranged around the pictures are very similar. However there are some clear and fundamental differences Kerrangs layout is much more simplicitic and is less comercialised than NME. However it is obviously important for magazines to have differences otherwise we would all by the same one.