Chosen Genre

I chose to make a rock magazine, because it's my main perference of music so I thought it would be a lot easier and joyable for me to create.

There is a lot of music magazines for rock music because it appeals to most people world widely.



Pop magazine comparison to Rock magazine

I researched different genre's of music magazine to find that the other main genre of music magazines was to be pop. I compared NME to Smash hits because it shows the differences between rock and pop magazines and discovered a lot of differences.

Smash Hits is aimed for a much younger age group compared to NME. The audience is aimed at the age of 9-14. The use of colour and the layout are bright and clearer, the magazine uses bright colours such as pinks, oranges and yellows so that this magazine will stand out and be appealing to its target audience. I like the use of colour of the magazine name, it stands out and draws attention to the public buying this particular magazine. I think towards the bottom of the magazine there is too much colour and doesn’t focus on just the one or two colours of text, it has a different range and contrast with each other.

NME is for a age group of teenagers, it has a much more simple layout compared to rival magazines such as Kerrang. It doesn’t have competition with Smash Hits because they focus on different genres of music, Smash Hits being a pop magazine and NME being an rock/indie magazine.I like the simplicity of NME’s layout on the front page, it isn’t overcrowding and too plain. NME sticks to 3 main colours for the text: white, red and black. These colours go very well together, so I prefer the layout of NME than Smash Hits.

Research

I research current popular music magazines, I thought to do this so I could know how to make my own magazine modern and appeal to it's target audience.

The most popular genre of music magazine that I found was rock/punk magazines; I also discovered that NME and Kerrang are the most popular rock magazines- so they are competitive towards each other. It is extremely important that NME and Kerrang do not do a special edition on the same band at the same time because the publishers know that the readers will opt for the better looking magazine whether it is not the usual magazine they read. Both magazines have a “busy” layout; everything is crammed onto their front cover pages into simple form of what that particular magazine contains. NME has a much softer layout than Kerrang, many people I have spoken to while doing my research has said that Kerrang has a harsh.

The NME font is the same in every magazine published. The block red capitals letters surrounded by white and then outlined in black, this helps the public recognise this particular magazine instead of mistakenly another one. NME is in competition with Kerrang as they are both well known and read frequently, so the publishers of NME do not want to confuse their readers by having the same layout as Kerrang does. The characteristics of NME are:

•   Magazine name is distinct and located in the corner.
•  Main picture has more photographs/captions on top. 
•  One band for main photograph with band name and a comment.
• Issue of magazine is shown under the name of the magazine.
• List of other bands featured in the bottom left & strip across the top.
• Barcode is located in the bottom right (turned sideways).

The style of Kerrang is a disorganised layout. It consists of the same sort of layout in the terms of:

• Magazine name- acts as a logo, distinguishes Kerrang from any other magazine.  
• Barcode is in the same place 
• Name of featuring band in the middle/side of the cover page.Big bold eye-catching images and sub-headings.  
• 
  
  Other feature band names located in the left hand side in a column which includes pictures. Or/and across the top and bottom- with no pictures.   
• Font on front cover stays the same.  
•  ‘!’ after magazine name shouts at reader. 

Amy Heath's AS Media

In this blog I will be researching and planning my print Media coursework.