Contents Page Analysis (Kerrang)

This is a contents page taken from an issue of Kerrang magazine, and I shall be analysing and taking ideas from this design when considering how to lay out my own contents page for my music magazine.

One of the first things we see when looking at this contents page is the Editors Note, located in the top right-hand corner. Many other magazines feature an Editors Note on their contents page, and the language used in this particular section is chatty and informal - which is effective as it would appeal to the target audience of the magazine, allowing them to feel as though they have connected with the editor on a personal level. It also appears as though the editor has personally signed the end of his piece, which is considered conventional and again compels the audience to connect with the editor personally - almost as though the editor is their friend. Also, an image of the front cover of the magazine is featured next to the editorial, which reminds us what we're reading.

Next, we see the word "Contents". This informs the reader what it is that they are looking at and the colours and font follow the house style of the magazine. This particular choice of colouring stands out because of the contrast between them, and is also widely associated with Kerrang magazine, so readers easily recognise it and become familiar with the style. Because the colour scheme throughout the magazine is also yellow, black and white, it gives us a feeling as an audience that the magazine is consistent.

This page is dominated mainly by images which are found on the left-hand side of the page, and they give the reader an early insight as to what will be featured in the magazine before we've even read anything, because our eyes are drawn to the images before the text on the right-hand side. By putting eye-catching images on the page readers who are interested in this particular style of music (Kerrang magazine features artists in the Rock genre) can quickly see if their favorite bands are featured in the issue, which would grab their attention. Or, even if they have never heard of the bands shown, they may feel compelled to read the pages about them because these bands may be popular with other readers of this magazine, and they would want to stay up-to-date. Alongside each of the pictures the page number and a brief description of the articles is displayed, giving readers faster access to something they may be interested in. However, a problem with displaying this many images is that the magazine may give the impression of messiness or disorganisation, which some readers may find off-putting.

With the actual text on the page, (as mentioned before) the colour scheme and font is the same throughout the magazine, but as this page mainly consists of images, there is very little text used here. The text that is used, however, is bold, eyecatching and aggressive - which fits in nicely with the genre of the magazine, as a tidier approach would look out of place on the page. It is this bold attitude used by the magazine that I feel attracts readers, as they know what to expect of a magazine in this genre, and the style matches the aggressive, rough stereotype which fits rock music like a glove.

Questionnaire and Feedback

Basically, this is the questionnaire I gave out to 30 young people, between the ages of around 12 and 25, to see who would be most interested in my magazine, and to give me an idea of what my target audience would be interested in. Though my target audience is females from 15-21, I also wanted to offer my questionnaire to people outside of those margins, to see if anyone else would be interested in the magazine.

Are you male or female?

Male                                      Female

How old are you?

11-16                     17-21                     21+

How often do you buy a music magazine?

Daily                      Weekly                Monthly               Never                  

Other (please specify) ____________________________

How much would you be willing to spend on a music magazine?

£1.89 - £3.10                       £3.10 - £4.50                       £4.50+

What sort of music do you enjoy most?

Pop                        Indie                     Rock                      Hip Hop/R&B

Other (please specify) ____________________________

Which feature do you enjoy most about a music magazine?

Pullouts               Free stuff            New Bands         Tour Dates          Articles                Quizzes

Editors Section Other (please specify) ____________________________

Which do you think is the most important feature on the front cover of a magazine?

Colour Scheme             Artist                Images                     Headlines                           Free Stuff/Offers

Other (please specify) ____________________________

Would you be interested in an Indie music magazine focused mainly on young women?

Yes                     No

I received varying results from my questionnaire, and asked some of my respondents (the ones who best fitted my target audience) to supply me with some feedback on what they would want from a female orientated music magazine.

The majority of the people asked said that they prefered a weekly magazine to a daily or monthly issue; this was because they felt that this would allow the magazine to be up-to-date (which is difficult to achieve with a monthly magazine) but not struggling for new ideas (which would inevitably happen with a daily magazine, as it is very unlikely for breaking news to happen daily in this genre of the music industry). When respondents came to the question about the price, 24 of them said they were willing to pay £1.89-£3.10 but of these 24, twelve of them said they would be willing to pay a higher price if the magazine was of a high quality.

The overall outcome of the genre question confirmed that an Indie magazine - with 20 of the 30 respondents choosing it - would be the best choice for my target audience, and I was pleased with this result. The respondents seemed to find that articles about new bands were the most interesting aspects of a magazine, however, several of the people asked also said that they would enjoy the magazine if it offered album reviews for artists in this genre, as it would provide them with opinions to consider when looking for something new to listen to.

Generally, the thing my respondents found to be the most important on a front cover was the images, as they are the first thing you really see when glancing at magazines in a shop; one respondent commented "images of well-know artists could draw in a crowd". If you have a bad picture, people would likely be discouraged from purchasing your product.

The last question, about whether the respondents would be interested in a magazine aimed at women, had a predictable outcome: the 7 males that I asked (so that I could get varying feedback) said they would not be interested, and all but three of the females asked said that they would be interested.

Mock-ups

Now that I've decided on my target audience and have collected data from my questionnaire, I have begun planning the layout for my main task construction pieces.

These are example layouts of how I would design my front page and contents page. The colours in the white boxes indicate the colours I would possibly use for those sections: mainly, I would like to use green, white and purple for my colour scheme, as I want my magazine to be individual and stand out on a shelf.



(Right = Front Page, Left = Contents)

The light purple on the front page mock-up indicates how much space I would like the main image to take up on the page - conventionally images on the front of a magazine take up almost the whole area.
Unconventionally, I would like to place a puff of information in the bottom-right corner of the front page, where a barcode would usually go. The lead article and anchorage text will go in the center of the page, over the top of the main image so that we associate this image with the article, and also so that it will be noticed by readers.

On my contents page I would use mainly images, and the section of text would be rather small as I feel that images would be more appealing to the audience. I have not yet decided whether I would like to include an editorial on the contents page, but if I did I would place it in the top-left corner, as this is were they usually go. All of the images on my contents page would be relevant to sections of the magazine, and each would have a page number in the corner.


Below is shown the mock-up of my double-page spread.

Again, the colours indicate what I would use for the text on this page. I would use a large image on the left-hand side, which would be of the band/artist I will use for my main article.
At the top of the page, I will have the magazine name (so that readers are reminded what they're reading) and an article summary/description below this, so that the audience know what to expect from the piece. The text will be at the bottom of the page, which is conventional for most music magazine articles. I believe that the top of the page should consist draw attention to the artist's name and quote from the text, so that the audience know who it is about/what they will talk about - the direct quote will be relevant to the article title.

Planning - Target Audience

When beginning to plan my main task - the music magazine - the first thing I need to look at is what I would like my target audience to be, as this will be the basis of the product design.

I have decided to aim my music magazine at older teenage females and young women, from around the ages of 15 to 21, as there is not a dominant magazine in this area of the market. Though there are a substantial number of music magazines aimed at teenagers, such as Kerrang, Rocksound, NME and Q, I feel that the majority of these magazines are male dominated: when I browsed through several issues of NME and Kerrang in particular, only a handful of the images used were of females. I want to create a magazine which shows women in powerful positions in the music industry, but without disregarding males entirely; my magazine is intended to be slightly girly to appeal to a female audience.

I want to make my magazine inspiring, and want it to show female role models for older girls who are interested in music - but not specifically Pop music, which is the area in which most of our female artists stem from. A good example of a female role model (the kind I would like to encourage to be featured in my magazine) would be an artist like Hayley Williams; she is arguably the most dominant member of the band Paramore, and is largely successful and considered to be a role model to a large number of teenage girls.

Whilst I recognise that there are music magazines aimed at females, the majority of them give off an immature impression, which is something I would like to go against when creating my magazine. For example, Top of the Pops magazine gives off a cluttered, childish vibe because of all the bright pinks, purples and bubble-style fonts - though this is popular with readers of a younger age, I want my magazine to have a more mature, professional style and layout.

I have decided that the genre of my magazine will mainly be Indie music, as this particular type of music varies in style from band to band, and this would allow a lot more female artists to be involved in my magazine, without being Pop musicians: if I had decided to create a rock magazine for women, it would have been considerably harder as there are very few female rock musicians.

So, to sum up my target audience, they would ideally be:

• ambitious females
• in their late teens, early twenties (15-21)
• interested in Indie music

Prelim

This is my finished preliminary piece - the front cover for a school magazine. I thought it would be appropriate to use an image of a student on the front cover, as this would be someone the target audience could relate to: students may not have liked a picture of a teacher on the front, as it may have made the magazine less personal or more authoritative. With the image, I did very little to edit the picture as I wanted to make it seem as realistic as possible, as though it could be any student. I wanted the person in the photograph to look academic, but still casual, as I believe this gives off a positive impression of the school: you can learn, but still be yourself. I decided that a good way to show this would be to have an image of someone reading and looking studious.

My magazine is aimed at Sixth Form students, so it would have been inappropriate to have an image of somebody in a school uniform; I also wanted my subject to be wearing reasonably plain clothing, so as not to give an impression of disorder through a messily dressed student.
I chose to keep the name of the magazine relatively plain and simple, so I picked "School Smart" because I liked the used of alliteration and felt that it directly informed readers that this would be an academic magazine.
The colour scheme of the page is pretty straightforward, as I wanted to send a positive, simplistic view of my magazine to the audience; I chose red and blue because they are the school colours, and black because it made the words stand out clearly on the page.
I decided that, in order to make my magazine more appealing, I would offer my readers a study guide pull-out, as I felt that this would be useful to the targeted audience and may compel them to read the magazine. Also, because I wanted this magazine to be widely available to members of the school, I decided against giving my magazine a price and would offer it free to students - I felt that this would be more appealing to students, as they may not want to pay for it.
To encourage the audience to read the magazine, I chose to use red and blue over a black background for eyecatching articles, in order for them to stand out against the page. I also picked topics which I felt the students would be interested in, but kept them relatively school-related as opposed to off-topic articles about fashion, etc. which would not be relevant for an academic magazine.




I also did a mock-up of a contents page as part of my preliminary piece, to give an idea of what I would do if I did make more of this magazine.

Above is shown the layout I would use for a contents page for this magazine. The title would be located in the top-left corner, using the same colours as were used on the front cover of the school magazine. I would primarily use images on this page, as images would grab the attention of the reader more directly than large bulks of text: the actual contents would be displayed down the right-hand side, next to images which would correspond to different sections of the magazine (I would also choose to use little blocks with numbers in over the images, which would quickly tell the reader which page to turn to for that particular section). I also think it would bring a more personal element to the magazine if I were to include a large picture of the people involved in the school magazine (i.e. the students who write the columns) as it would perhaps encourage readers to want to get involved, and to have their picture included. In the top right-hand corner I think it would be a nice touch to place a picture of the editor of the magazine - which ideally would be a teacher, as I feel this would show positivity between students and staff working together.

Brief

This year for my print portfolio in AS media we have been asked to do the following:

Preliminary

• produce the front page of a college/school magazine

Main Task

• the front page of a music magazine;
• a contents page for the magazine;
• and a double page spread