Analyzing the leading music magazine pages.

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Target Audience

Here are the target audiences for similar music magazines:

kerrang! Magazine: "Individually minded, independent of thought and musically experienced, an audience defined by attitude, passion and loyalty."

Q Magazine: "Open minded experience seekers, the Q audience don’t define themselves by the music they listen to. Music is an important passion, but their love of music will never be to the detriment of their other passions, such as film, sport and comedy."

MOJO Magazine: "Discerning and passionate music aficionados, the MOJO audience is predominately male (72%) and affluent (36% AB). These heavy consumers of music see their passion as discovery without boundaries, genre and decade being secondary to quality."

My target audience will male with a passion for rock/indie bands. The age group I have chosen are teenagers+ (18-25). As I am aiming my magazine at a thin range of age groups, I will sell less copies, however, I will have to plan my magazine so that it suites the life style of all the different ages that fall between 18-25.
A few facts about my target audience:
What do they drink? Alcohol, tea, coffee
How do they travel? Cars or public transport
Are they fashionable? Yes
What genre of music do they enjoy? Rock, metal, indie, electronic rock.
What films/TV do they enjoy viewing? Comedy, horror, sports.
Favorite locations? pub/club, with friends.
I have chosen a target audience of the ages 18-25, who are laid-back, funny, intelligent, fashionable and enjoy most types of rock related music.

Media studies magazine development.
Rock Mags:

Q magazine
A Different Take On Music
Q is a music magazine published monthly in the United Kingdom, with a circulation of 130,179 as of June 2007. Q was first published in 1979. Originally was to be called Cue (as in the sense of cueing a record, ready to play), but the name was changed so that it wouldn't be mistaken for a snooker magazine. Another reason, cited in Q's 200th edition, is that a single-letter title would be more prominent on newsstands.

Kerrang magazine
Live life loud
Kerrang! was first published on 6 June 1981. During the 1980s and early 1990s the magazine placed many thrash and glam metal acts on the cover (like Mötley Crüe, Slayer, Bon Jovi, Metallica, Poison, Testament, Venom) but later discarded them when grunge acts such as Nirvana rose to fame.

Mojo magazine
Mojo is a popular music magazine published by Bauer, monthly in the United Kingdom. Mojo was first published on 15 October 1993. Often criticised for its frequent coverage of classic rock acts such as The Beatles and Bob Dylan.

Other magazines.
Classic Rock is a British magazine dedicated to the radio format of classic rock, published by Future Publishing, who are also responsible for its "sister" publication Metal Hammer. Although firmly focusing on key bands from the 1960s through early 1990s. It recently published its 100th issue and now has a higher circulation than the NME.

Raw Magazine was founded in the summer of 1988. Producers came together to create Metal Hammer magazine having split from Kerrang! The first issue went on sale on August 31 of that year as a fortnightly publication and steadily grew to become a serious rival to the more established Kerrang!. Rock Hard was one of the first songs released by the Beastie Boys, released by record label Def Jam on 12" in 1984. The song contains samples from the AC/DC song "Back in Black"; the Beastie Boys used this sample without legal permission.

Ray Gun was an American alternative rock-and-roll magazine, first published in 1992 in Santa Monica, California. The result was a chaotic, abstract style, not always readable, but distinctive in appearance. The cutting-edge advertising, musical artists and pop culture icons spotlighted were typically ahead of the curve.

Final pages

This is my front cover for my school magazine. Here you can see the image of my classmate and the images of the kids used as a background. I got a dozen chenderit students to run down the hill screaming at me while I took their picture. I used a variety of fonts here, cracked, impact, and georgia. I used red and white for the text as it relates to the school colors and it is easy to read. I have placed my mast head in the centre in-front of the image, I really wanted the text behind the arms of the kids, for this I would have had to cut the arms from the image then placed them directly over the old arms of the original image.

This is my contents page, for my school magazine. I created the background, which I am most pleased with, using photoshop, I stared by coloring the the background grey and used artistic tools, mosaic, to create the grid style. I then placed a text box over the grid and typed my text. I used white and red which relate to the front page, the school colors and they are easy to read with the black background, I created the black background by editing the text box and filing it in with black. I then created a glow, in back which fades the black out. I did a similar thing with the contents title. I created a glow 'red' and increased the radius to 3 cm.

Here is one of the images used on the front cover, I have used my classmate to pose as a Britain's got talent winner. I have photoshopped her face using curves, levels, brightness and contrast, the plaster tool and the dodge tool. I also used the paint brush to bring out the red in her cheeks. I have placed her over the top of a background created my using 'artistic tools' and selecting mosaic. I also used the gradient tool to create the circular patterns in the top and bottom corners. I blurred around the face, emphasizing the point of interest, which is her face.