Analysis of Magazine Title Blocks

The title block on this magazine ‘Billboard’ tells us that the target audience is around the 20’s age. This is due to the font being Sans serif this is seen to be the modern text, and also even though the font colour is black they use an element of fun to attract their target audience by filling in the ‘b’, ‘o’, ‘a’ and the ‘d’ with the colours red, yellow and blue – these are all primary colours. It looks simple but is also effective and makes it easy to remember.

The masthead for this magazine shows that it is an older target audience as the font is serif which is a more mature font style. Also the regular font colour of the title block is usually red, however it can change on special editions (as seen on the cover I have here). Although there is not much to this masthead it is effective as it looks attractive to the eye with the font used and the boldness of it.

The title is 3 letters. It is a white bold font on a red background. The ‘XXL’ does not tell us what music genre it is, however it does show us that it is a modern day type of magazine as it uses a sans serif font. The masthead is eye catching which is easy to remember for the audience.

Designing the title block

To start my music magazine off, I have to first think of the masthead as it is the first thing that catches the eye or that the audience looks out for. I wanted the title to fit the genre and style of the magazine that it is. After this I came up with the name ‘The Beat’, I chose this because I thought it was best suited to the genre I was going for this magazine. Then I had to find which font best illustrates the magazine and the title. Out of all of the fonts I tried I went with font 2; font 1 was more for headlines/subtitles, although font 3 captures the genre of the magazine I felt that it was to unconventional for the magazine and font 4 made it a bit hard to read so wouldn’t be appealing to the reader.

After I have decided on my font style and what the magazine should be called, i then started to experiment with different colour s on the masthead. When experimenting I found colours that weren’t as eye catching as others. I wanted there to be a colour scheme on the front colour, and I ended up using the three colours I liked the best bumble-bee yellow, black and white. The bumble-bee yellow was the most appealing of the three so I used it for the title. I was happy with my choice of colour.

Generic Conventions of a Music Magazine

Generic Conventions of a Music Magazine

One of the most generic conventions of XXL magazine is the masthead. For every one of their magazines has the same red coloured background and white bold font colour. Most music magazines do this same convention as it is easy for it to stand out and read, also it makes the magazine name memorable. For this magazine it is placed in the top left corner, therefore the reader is always aware that it is going to be there so the times where the main images of the artists cover the masthead it doesn’t matter too much because you know what magazine it is.

The central image of the artist/s help to maintain the stereotype of this magazine. The images are always of current and popular artist/s at that time of the music genre that suits XXL music magazine (rap & hiphop) – the majority of the time it is mainly men on the front cover. The people on the front cover are reasonably attractive, so it captures the readers eye.

Customer loyality is maintained in every issue as they do the same festures such as interviews and articles with the current and popular artist/s. From looking at the magazine, XXL looks like it is more aimed for males in their teenage years all the wy to their 30s. I came to this assumption that this is the target audience as the colours used are more of the sterotypical “boy-ish” colours (reds and blacks – lighter colours are sterotypically for girls). Also the adverts inside this magazine are mainly mens clothing, men’s fragrances, technology etc.

On a few occasions they have women on the front cover, the women is usually fairly attractive therefore making the consumer drawn to purchasing the magazine.

The usal contents page for XXL magazine is simple, but has its effectiveness. It features the masthead, however its smaller and does take up the domination of the page. The content has a few artists on the photos on the left and then on the right is where they have the page numbers and what is iincluded in the magazine. The contents page is appealing as there are photos relating to the issue of the magazine

An analysis of a double page spread issue of XXL magazine, is that firstly they always have the picture of the artist more dominate as they make the image large to either take up half or more than half of the double page spread and then the other page is just a full on article. There are very few font colours and most of the time on the double page spread they have a quote by the artist in which stands out from the article and image – its always big, and either a different font colour or a different font.

All of the above research is useful to me creating my magazine as this is going to be the type of target audience, therefore I am going to be following some of these key conventions used for this magazine. This means that the front cover, contents page and the double page spread will follow the simple factor – as it seems that less is more.

Music Magazine Results (Bar Charts)