For my front cover, I tried to adhere to layout conventions so that potential readers would acknowledge it as being similiar to magazines they were used to. Being unique is all well and good, but people tend to avoid things that are radically different. I placed the masthead at the top, and the date and price above that, because these convey crucial information about the magazine. Below that, I divided my cover up according to the rule of thirds, placing my photo in the right two thirds, and cover lines for the magazine's other key acts in the left third. I then placed the main cover line in the centre of the page, just below the maain image. At the bottom, I placed the barcode and a list of the rest of the acts inside. If someone had read far enough down the front page to show an interest in the magazine, they might be interested in these other acts. In order to make my magazine stand out, and also to direct attention away from the poor-quality photograph, I had to defy convention. The photo doesn't cover up the entire cover, instead being framed by the chevrons. These chevrons also from the colour scheme, which differs from most standard magazine colour schemes. Instead of using white as a primary colour, it uses black, combined with green and yellow. I beleive this gives my magazine a greater presence than others and will help it stand out when put on sale. Probably the largest break from tradition was the obscuring of my cover image's face. The smiley face serves numerous purposes. First, it obscures the bad photography, as previously mentioned. Secondly, it matches up with the genre of my magazine, being a pastiche of Daft Punk. Thirdly, it adds to the bold colour scheme by being bright and striking. The fact that it matches the yellow is just a bonus. 
I wanted to make my contents page easily readable, which meant following established conventions. In fact, the layout is almost directly inspired by Q magazine, albeit simplified. Divide the magazine in half, then quarters. The editorial goes in the top left quarter, and the cover article in the top right. The lower half is devoted to the article list. For easy reference, the features are in one column and regular articles are in the other. In terms of colour, the colour scheme for the front cover is retained; this is also following convention. Using the same colour scheme will allow people to gain familiarity with my magazine.
Initially, my planned target audience was the so-called "raver" crowd. Mostly composed of young, middle class people, my profiling was based around the party culture of places like Ibiza, which are infamous for their wild holidaymakers, copious amounts of alcohol and drugs, and music that one could only dance to if one had recently consumed said alcohol and drugs. These people, I assumed, would be fairly undemanding music-wise, mostly listening to it as a kind of "audio-wallpaper". Besides, I thought many of them would be too stoned out of their minds to care anyway. I would therefore design a magazine that drew this audience in with flashy colours and bold font, before giving them basic information about upcoming events and acts. In short, a low-brow magazine for a low-brow audience.
However, several things made me change this view of my audience. Firstly, I realised that the ravers I would be selling to might find out about the events via other methods, and they might not read much; this made seeling to them look like a bad idea. Secondly, I found that the supposedly simple rave music I had chosen to base my magazine on was far more complex than I had expected, and that there might be more "hardcore" fans of it than the typical raver. Thirdly, I had already started making the magazine, and my natural leaning towards intellectual discussion meant it was too high brow for my original audience. So, I changed the focus of my magazine away from rave music to the more encompassing electronic music and marketed it towards the serious fans instead. These fans take a great deal more interest in the music side of the rave scene; they might well play an instrument (most likely a synthesizer) or show an interest in being a DJ. They would need to be techno-savvy in order to operate these musical instruments. Most likely they would drink and take drugs like my first audeince, but never to excess. In short, they are the serious fans of electronic music, and they expect a serious magazine, which is what I was making.
Final choices for magazine: 5, 6 and 10.
For my magazine, I intend to aim for a relatively mass-market, non niche audience. Because the genre my magazine focuses on is dance/rave style music normally played at parties, my audience will be mostly outgoing, sociable people. They should range from students up to middle age, but will mostly be male. They will likely have a relatively unsophisticated diet, and are not above eating fast food. They do like their alcohol though, beers and lagers particularly. In terms of media consumption their tastes are equally lowbrow, preferring mindless action and disaster movies. They watch lots of TV, generally avoiding documentaries in favour of reality TV shows. In general, my audience is often bored by intellectual media, and so the mindless beats of dance/rave is a good choice for a magazine for them.
Graphical AnalysisTextual Analysis
Graphical AnalysisTextual Analysis
Graphical AnalysisTextual Analysis
