Monday 27 April 2009

project 3

The key stylistic features of a magazine are the masthead, the lead article and the main sells. The masthead is the name of the magazine and is the first thing you usually see on the front cover as it’s big and bold. The lead article is generally the main story which the photo on the front cover is related to, whether it’s an artist/band/celebrity. The main sells on the front cover are the other stories which are featured in the magazine which are usually interviews with other celebrities or contributors.

Mixmag is a magazine for the dance genre. The slogo is “The worlds biggest dance music magazine”. The masthead is placed at the top of the cover in a bold font. The lead article is on Alison Goldfrapp, a singer, who is pictured on this front cover. There are quite a few main sells featured, like “524 nights out!” and “Gnarls Barkley – Hip hop’s new superstars bit yer legs”.

They are using colours that seem to fit in with the theme for the lead article in this issue, Alison Goldfrapp is wearing a bright pink, and so they are using complimenting colours such as purple, pale pink and white. This magazine is most likely going to be aimed at older teenagers (18+) to people in their twenties, and because it’s more of a specialist magazine people who have a big interest in dance music or who dj is going to be more likely to purchase it.



Q Magazine is a music magazine whose artists and bands featured vary greatly, for examples on just this magazine cover, 2 of the artists featured are The Rolling Stones and Mariah Carey who couldn’t be more different from each other. The slogo for this magazine is “The Worlds Greatest Music Magazine”.

The lead article is for an interview with The Verve, and the main sells include “Kylie vs. Dannii – Love? Hate? Love-Hate?” which is to do with the Minogue sisters, and “What’s in the Box? – Unwrapped: rock packaging goes mental”.

They use quite a basic looking front cover, the colours they use are quite simple, using simple black, white and red colours, and a white background for the picture they are using for the lead article picture.




Kerrang! Is a magazine that features music from bands and artists who are from mainly alternative/pop-punk/pop-rock/rock genres. Their slogo is “Life is loud”.

Their lead article is for band Paramore, their main picture features the lead singer Hayley Williams. Some of the main sells are: “Good Charlotte – the Madden boys are back!” and comes with a picture, and also “Dirty little secrets! – what’s your favourite rock star got to hide?”

This front cover has quite alot going on with lots of bright eye catching colours, and again they look like they’re trying to stick to a theme to go with the lead article picture – Hayley Williams, she has bright red hair and is wearing a matching red top, alot of the font colours are red and orange.

It also shows alot of the bands/artists that are featured in that issue, at the bottom at top of the cover.




From my research on the ABC website I have found that Q Magazine has the highest net circulation, selling 81,240 issues every month in the UK and R.O.I and 103,017 in total around the world, which is probably because of how long they have been around and how they have such a reputable magazine, although it’s Mojo that is selling the most magazines to other countries around the world, selling 44,897 copies of its issue every month, these two magazines are definitely one of the most popular magazines for people who seriously appreciate all genres of music.
The magazine Rocksound is selling the least copies of its issues, selling 12,734 copies In the UK and R.O.I every month and 7,277 copies everywhere else in the world, though this is probably because it’s not as well known as Q and Mojo are, and they usually stick to only one genre of music which is rock.
NME and Kerrang! Magazines are selling the least copies to other countries, NME only selling 3,562 and Kerrang! selling only 2,144 copies, probably because again they’re not aswell known, and have not been around as long as the other big magazines, also its featuring more specific genres of music, for example NME focus more on indie music.

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