Conventions of a magazine are the features that appear in almost all magazines, such as the front cover of a magazine will include: a masthead, cover lines, a main image and a dateline. These conventions exist because they all play an important part in magazines as they are instantly recognisable by an audience and are now expected to be on all magazine covers. Some magazines are more conventional than others depending on who the magazine is aimed at. If the magazine is aimed at more of an upper class, it is likely to have more conventions than it would if it was aimed at a lower class audience.
When it came to creating my own magazine, I first analysed the conventions of similar magazines to my own. I found that in the majority of the music magazines I analysed, a lot of images were used to attract the audience as well as a clear masthead, cover lines and a dateline. I decided on the ‘pop’ genre for my music magazine, in which I then analysed pop music magazine covers. I found that the majority of pop music magazine covers used various bright colours to attract their audience as opposed to having two or three main colours. This is something I have tried to include when it came to creating my own magazine. Magazines that influenced me when creating my magazine were Q, Vibe and Mixmag.
On my magazine front cover I included: a colourful masthead that would stay the same throughout each issue as this keeps the name instantly recognisable, cover lines that are placed down one side of the page, a dateline, barcode, bright colours to attract the audience’s eye and a main cover line that will be in a larger font so it is clear to the audience what the main cover line is. The front cover of the magazine is important because it needs to be visually appealing in order to catch the audience’s eye and stand out from other music magazines that are on the shelf. This is something I will need to include on my own music magazine cover so that I attract my target audience as well as inform them on the contents of the magazine. My chosen magazine name Wave connotes the waves within a swimming pool or the sea as it linked in with my chosen music genre ‘pop’ as I pictured my target audience to be young and likely to hang out at the beach. I have chosen to place my masthead at the top of the page on the left hand side so that it can be clearly seen by the reader and have made the shape of it into a wave so that it links in with my chosen magazine name Wave. My chosen music genre is ‘pop music’ so I have tried to represent this through my magazine by attracting the audience with bright colours so that it is ‘fun-looking’ as this is what I have associated with the genre of ‘pop music’. My mise-en-scene of images are from the waist up so that they capture the models clothes as well as her pose and expression. I chose to put my model in a smart going out dress because although I aimed my magazine at young aspirers, I also want to attract some lower middle class women as well who may have a slightly higher income and status but still aspire to be like the women in the magazines. The model I have chosen is 17 so she fits in with the age range I am aiming my magazine at and the pose I have chosen makes her look like she’s happy in life but still has a very sophisticated look to her so I can target my social class of D, C2 and CI.
On my contents page I included: the same bright colours as I did on the front cover so that they link together, a letter from the editor as this is something I found the majority of magazines included on their contents pages, a feature articles sections and a regulars article section in which I found the majority of the articles would be in the features section as these change in each issue whereas the regulars remain throughout each issue so if the audience is a regular buyer, they will not need to have all the regulars displayed on the contents page. As for the layout of the page I did not stick to a specific style of conventions as they varied in each magazine I analysed because the contents page is not the first thing that catches the audience’s eye so it needs to be more informal than visually appealing.
On my double page spread I included: a clear headline so the audience can see exactly what the article is about, a kicker that draws the audience in so that they want to continue to read the article, a drop cap letter, gutters which follow the typical magazine style of an article, pull quotes from the speaker which not only encourage the reader to read on but also make the article look more visually appealing, a sidebar that offers help or more information about the article and finally images that show the audience what the article is about and again make the page look more visually appealing.
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