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.