Planning your magazine cover - linking your design to your brand

Once you have established a clear idea of your magazine's brand identity, how it fits in with existing media and how you plan to attract your target audience, you are ready to start planning.
Refer to this lesson and your analysis of Q and Kerrang! magazine to help you explain your planning and design decisions for your own music magazine

Research - Impact - Planning

• Some people are launching into their photography without having fully established a sense of their magazine’s brand identity or how they want to represent their artists in the magazine.

• It’s essential that you do this first, so that your findings inform your planning decisions and to ensure that you take the right sort of photographs in the first place!

• Think about it like a three-part process…

Refer to this lesson from 26/11/12 to ensure you understand the importance of linking your research and planning together and check that you are able to answer the first four questions in detail before proceeding!

The key features of a magazine cover

As previously discussed and to use as a reminder - Ensure you are able to identify the following when analysing music magazine and also when constructing your own magazine.

The features of a magazine cover

Masthead:                         The name of the newspaper or magazine.

Skyline:                                This is at the very top of the page and gives information about what the magazine has to offer i.e. free posters / competitions.

Slogan:                                 The words associated with the magazine or product the magazine is advertising i.e. ‘Because you’re worth it’

Anchorage Text:               This is the writing that is next to the main picture so it tells you what the main picture is about.

Price:                                     This is usually hidden in a corner if the magazine is expensive or written in large writing if the magazine is cheap.

Main Image:                       This is the big picture in the middle of the page or there may be lots of different pictures however there is usually one bigger than the rest. This is the main image.

Bar code:                             This is so the magazine can be scanned at the checkout till, the barcode is usually in the corner.

Sell Lines:                            These are the writing down the sides or along the bottom of the front page, this gives information about the other articles inside the magazine.

Layout:                                 Is the front cover very organised or is it very busy? Are there lots of arrows and text boxes or lots of puffs? Does the front cover say ‘You’ or ‘Your’ a lot?

Puff:                                      This is in the shape of a circle or a star and it gives other information about the magazine articles.

Colour Scheme:                What colours are being used? Is it pink? Is it for women or girls?

As promised an example of a level 1 music magazine!

An example of a level 4 music magazine

Research and planning: Progress check

Remember, you should be keeping a close eye on the production schedule for your magazine, which can be found here.

Many of you are falling behind and you are not making use of the resources on this blog. In order to move forward with the planning phase you should have done the following and posted your findings on your blog:

• Researched the music magazine industry 
• Researched examples of music magazines - their brand identities, audiences and content analysis
• Identified the genre for your own magazine - explaining how you have reached your decisions (not just because you like it!)
• Researched the conventions of this genre and the personae of typical artists from this genre (mood boards would be useful for this - check out the examples on the blog)
• Researched the conventions of magazine design for your chosen genre - including detailed textual analyses of front covers, contents pages and double page spreads, which you link back to the magazines' respective brands and target audiences.
• Taken this research to your audience and get their feedback on what they want from a music magazine

As we stressed when you produced your school magazine, it's essential that you reflect on  your findings and identify how they will influence your decisions about your own magazine.

Then, you are ready to start planning the following and explaining reasons for your decisions, based on your research findings.

The magazine in general:

• Your magazine's 'brand identity' and mode of address - You should explain how you will lay out your magazine in a way that reflects the brand identity. Use the example we did together, analysing Q magazine to help you.
• A flat plan for your magazine showing the contents
• Your magazine's title and masthead
• Your choice of register, colours, fonts etc. to form a style guide for your magazine

The artists you will photograph for your magazine:

• Your choices of models
• The 'star images' or 'personae' you are going to construct
• Costume, hair and make-up
• Gesture codes and modes of address
• Camera shots and angles and lighting you will use
• Locations, props, colours you will associate with these artists

Your front cover, DPS and contents page:

• What you will include and how they will be laid out (hand-drawn drafts are fine for this at first - you can scan these in and upload them on to your blog, accompanied by either a written or audio commentary)

Please email your new blog addresses URGENTLY

If you have not already created your blog and submitted your address, you are behind schedule, and your progress is deemed as 'Red'.

Please read this post carefully: http://beaverwoodmediaas.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/new-blog-address-for-music-magazines.html


I have only received links to music magazine blogs from these students.

A reminder that the deadline for these blogs to be set up was Thursday 25th October - over a week ago. By now, your research should be well under-way, but without access to your blogs, we are unable to monitor your progress and give you the feedback you need. Please email the link to beaverwoodmedia@gmail.com urgently.

Please ensure that you are checking the AS media blog hub regularly to make use of the resources that are posted for you and to ensure that you are on top of all coursework deadlines - remember your time management skills are formally assessed in this unit!

I will be contacting parents of all those students whose blogs are still judged as 'Red' by the end of the week.

Good luck and if you have any queries, please don't hesitate to contact me. 121MS - please use our lessons on Monday 5th and Tuesday 6th to continue with your research.