music magzine title reasearch

I have found creating a unique and well though through magazine title can be difficult so here I have done research in to the connotations of some music magazines titles.

Kerrang’s title derives from the sound which an electric guitar makes when a power chord is played. this clearly links to the magazines theme of rock music as the electric guitar is usually associated with rock music. in my opinion the exclamation mark used at the end of the word represents rock music's loudness also coinciding with the cracked effect used on the text.

Despite pop music magazine Q's simplistic and almost mysterious title the single letter has a meaningful reason of being today. originally the magazine was to be named 'Cue' as in to cue a record to play but to avoid the confusion of it being a snooker magazine the title was stylised into 'Q'. I found this story useful of what I should avoid such as title which connote something different to what my magazine is promoting.

Billboard contents page



This contents page is from Billboard music magazine, Billboards contents pages have a unique aspect in that they include the music charts in the left hand side of the page, almost acting as a margin. The contents page is quite simplistic in that the background is white and main text being black leaving the light blue headings as the only colour. The white background commonly in Billboard magazine features an artist behind the text. Billboard continues to use the bold sans serif font but the title 'contents' and of the charts is a stylised version. Overall in my opinion the page is too boxed an plain and should further attract readers to pages than simply featured artists images with the page number.

Billboard front cover

This is the front cover of Billboard an American music magazine which covers the music industry and weekly keeps several internationally known music charts.

The Billboard title is usually partially covered by the artist featured on the front cover this could be because Billboard is a well-established magazine that no matter who is on the cover it over the title it is easily recognisable as Billboard.

Another traditional aspect of Billboard's covers are the background and sometimes titles colour cohesion with the artists clothes in this case the stripes on Justin Bieber's cardigan match the light blue background. the colour cohesion carries on into the slightly darker blue headings for the text and the white of Bieber’s T-shirt matching the white of his name.

Billboard commonly use sans serif bold font in this example all text is done in this fashion and the way different sections stand out would be down to use of lighter colour for the more important text and also larger size such as the featured artist's name.

Music magazine task

I have been researching music magazines such as NME as my next AS Media brief tells me to;
'Create a front page, contents page and double page spread of a new music magazine' which the preliminary task helped me to prepare for.

Evanescence - 'Women In Rock Rule!'

This is an example of a NME interview and an artist they would feature.

NME

NME also known as New Music Express is a UK based weekly music magazine. NME's first issue published in 1952, and it was the first British paper to include the singles chart. In the 1970's NME became th e best selling British music newspaper.
From March 1998 onwards, NME has no longer printed on newsprint, and as of now it has been changed to tabloid size and includes to convetions of a modern magazine.

NME music magazine: double page spread

NME music magazine: contents page

NME music magazine: cover page