Main Task: Magazines ( with examples )

Magazine 1 - Mojo
Audience - Young adults to Adults, more spohisticated than Kerrang's audience. Achievers & Materialists (due to the glossy cover)

Main Content - Mainstream music, predominatley rock/classic rock, focus around interviews. The articles inside always follow the set colour scheme of white and red, which connotes subtleness because there are no bold colours. The magazine also includes the name of the magazine "Mojo" scattered throughout the magazine, on the one page (left) it is seen twice. The format of the articles is similar to newspapers, becasue of the column layout of the text and few images.

Brand Identity - Upmarket/sophisticated magazine (£3.80) Commercial magazine, regular free CDs. Mojo tends to only feature commercial rock acts.

Magazine 2 - Kerrang!

0000000Audience - Teens 13-18 (roughly) Radicals/Underachievers. Post-modernistic Hedonists, today's "emo" youth and music (predominatley metal) fans. Aspirers who aspire to be a musician

Main Contents - Underground, metal/rock music, interviews, gig reviews, "Introducing" section (introduces up-and-coming bands) new concerts, competitions. To the right is an image of a standard double-page spread of a live review. As a reader of Kerrang! i know that the colour schemes vary depending on the band, but usually the images take up more space than the text. The strapline is reversed-out making it stand out from the rest, and the colour scheme for this particular image, is black , neon-green and white.

Brand Identity - Downmarket publication (only has a paper cover, where others have a glossy finish) priced at £2.20 so is cheap for its genre. this magazine connotes cool and rejects the mainstream, yet does include some mainstream acts such as Green Day.

Magazine 3 - BBC Music

Audience - Traditionalists, older generation, Succeeders, classical music fans.

Main Contents - Classical music, features on composers/performers. As you can see from the image (left) BBC Music, doesn't feature as many images as Kerrang! but does make sure that the images it does include are fairly large. The test font is a plain sans-serif, which in this context, connotes ordinary and nothing special.

Brand Identity - Sophisticated, upmarket, priced at £4.20 so is an expensive magazine which reflects on the type of audience (posh, upper-class) A magazine that upholds traditional values and dominant ideology.

SIMILARITIES

There are few similarities between these chosen magazines (other than the generic layout which most magazines follow) MOJO and Music are both "glossy" magazines, named so because of the glossy finish to the cover. All of the magazines follow a standard layout e.g: masthead ast the top of the page, main sell in the centre,etc, but another feature of the cover that they all have in common and is frequently used, is that the main sell, over laps the masthead. On all three of these magazines, the tops of the chosen atrist/s' heads are covering a portion of the masthead, this may be because the brand identity of that magazine has become so recognisable that it doesn't need to show all of the masthead. Next to the main sell on each magazine is a little tag line, which reveals a little more of the story. Music magazine and MOJO both come with free CDs every issue, Kerrang! however only comes with posters and rarely includes anything else free, but despite this all three of the magazines have freebies. All of these magazines denote musicians on the cover.

DIFFERENCES

The main difference for Kerrang magazine specifically, is that it has a paper cover as opposed to the other two glossy covers, this connotes youth and rebellion, which is one factor in why Kerrang! appeals to its target audience. A difference common in all three magazines is the price, ranging from £2.20 ( the humble Kerrang!) to £4.20 (the expensive BBC Music) a whole £2 difference! However the reasoning behindd this is the target audiences, BBC Music's audience is more the upper-class citizen who can afford to spend £4.20 on a magazine, whereas Kerrang!'s target audience is the younger radical generation who don't have the money to spend on expensive magazines. Another reason for the price difference is that "Music" magazine is monthly, and Kerrang! is weekly.