Evaluation of Analysis

From all of my analysis, I have decided on some features that I would want to include in my own rock/metal magazine.
Firstly I think that I need a lot of images for my front cover, contents and double page spread. I also need those images to be male orientated, like the ones in Kerrang!
I'm also going to have a colour scheme that is not very bright like the one in the rock/metal magazine i have looked at. It's quite a masculine looking magazine, with bold capital letters and a sans serif font, and I think I will include these features in my magazine.
I'm also going to write a double page spread on rock/metal music, because it is appropriate to the genre of magazine.
From what I have seen of Kerrang! there appears to be a focus on musicians, particularly to glamorise them, and it is often an interview. therefore I will try to do an interview with a musician.. In the front cover image they must look intimidating and cool, probably not smiling and generally representing a rock and roll image, like Matt Heafy on the cover of Kerrang!

Readership

Average issue readership

4500 Kerrang! readers out of 48,887 magazine readers. 4230 in the survey were 15-44.
270 were aged 45+ out of 48,887 magazine readers.
2850 of those are men, 1650 are women
I found this on nrs.co.uk the national readership survey.
From this we can see that the target audience is males from 15-44.
Almost double the readers are men rather than women, and there about 15 times more readers aged 15-44 than 45+.

From the front cover and double age spread I analysed, we could have figured out that this mostly a male orientated magazine, just from the image of the anonymous girl behind Matt Heafy, looking like she is his slave or something, which I talk more about in my analysis.
Also I think there are a lack of feminine features in the magazine, like typically girly colours like pink, images of girly looking women, all the women we see have black hair and tattoos and piercings, generally quite masculine.
There are clues that this is a magazine aimed at a younger audience and these clues are also included in the pieces I have looked at , such as informal language, images of young people,bold colours and fonts to stimulate a young audience, etc.

The reason I think that Kerrang! might have a relativly low readership, is because it is aimed at a younger audience, who have less money to spend than people who are older and have money to spend on magazines. I also think that Kerrang! is not a mainstream magazine, and is specialist to Rock and Metal, so people who dont like the alternative music, probably won't buy it. The mainstream audience is the best to have, like What's On TV with 35,450 readers. However Kerrang! is not a mainstream magazine, and a lot of shops i have been in don't sell Kerrang!

Analysing double page spread

I am now going to analyse Kerrang double page spread. Firstly something very prominent about these pages is that they are they the majority images. I think this shows us that the images are important in this article, as they have a Japanese theme to the article. Their new album is called Shogun which is a Japanese name, and Matt Heafy who we see in this article is half Japanese, so they are playing up to the whole Japanese theme. We see aspects of Japanese culture throughout the double page spread in the symbols behind the font, the geisha in the middle photo and Japanese symbols tattooed on his back. I think they have chosen to follow a theme because it makes the double page spread more engaging to read for the reader, as it is kind of like a story and adds another level to the article rather than just boring questions and a normal photo of the artist.
The images are also quite sexual, which adds to an element of rock and roll the Kerrang likes to portray. Matt Heafy appears. Also this article is promoting the band, and young boys will look up to this image and think they are really cool and glamorous.
It follows a colour scheme so the article is not too messy and we feel we can read it at ease.

Contents of Kerrang!

Now I am going to analyse the contents page. In the contents page we see mostly pictures. Apart from that we have a colour scheme of yellow font that follows on from the front cover, and capital sans serif font. The san serif shows it is a modern, informal magazine. The colours are mostly yellow and red, bright colours that your eyes are drawn to, to give the contents page an impressive image.
There is a slightly larger image for the double page spread, showing it is a worthwhile and important feature of the magazine. There is a white background for the contents because it makes it simpler to look at and find what you need to see. This image in the contents page is an image obviously shot to look scary, we can tell by use of face paint in the picture, the colours red and black of danger, and their facial expressions look crazy. They are also eating food in th epicture, and it shows us perhaps the article will have something to do with food.
The layout is fairly easy to read with the contents table on the right side of the grid and a table of pictures related to key articles taking up a majority of the page. I think this is a good way of presenting the contents, because people can look for pictures of their favourite bands to find the pages about them. Mostly I think Kerrang! Is a very visual magazine, with lots of photos on every page, to stimulate a young audience. The contents page is a good example of this.

Magazine main task

our task is to make a magazine cover, contents page and double page spread for a music magazine. The genre of music i have decided to base my magazine on is rock/metal. The reason i chose this was because i used to read kerrang (the cover i will analyse) so i think i will have a better knowledge of this genre than indie or pop.

Analysing Kerrang! Cover

Rock/metal magazine cover

The magazine fitting my genre that I will be analysing is Kerrang magazine, a weekly magazine.
I am going to talk about the ways in which I think this front cover applies to the genre.

Firstly I think that the large front cover image is typical of the genre. We see a man and a woman covered in tattoos with piercings, so typical metal/ rock style. Neither is smiling, showing a hard, serious attitude.

The camera angle is looking up at the man in the photo which makes him seem more intimidating. I think the photo fits the genre well as it shows attitude, it wants to convey a contrast to pop and the mainstream magazines, where you might see pop stars smiling and inviting you to read. The photo also fits a metal magazine, as it has a photo of a rock star, musician on the front.

Another thing I noticed is the woman on the front cover looks quite subservient to the rock star; she is behind him, slightly out of focus and appears to be giving him a massage. I think this magazine wants to break conventions and go against the rules of political correctness. I also think it shows something about the ‘rock star’ lifestyle, that rock stars are godlike and get loads of women. I think this photo is probably trying to show this about the rock star on the front too.

The text on the cover is always bold and in capitals, suggesting shouting and importance, a kind of in your face font that grabs your attention. The font itself looks chipped away and faded, which I think says something about the metal genre, that its not neat and well presented, and it wants to seem like it doesn’t care how it looks, in contrast to the colourful tidy font on a pop magazine.

The title Kerrang on the cover shows a brand confidence I think, as the woman’s head is covering a lot of the title. I think it shows a stab against the mainstream audience, that this is a magazine for its fans and people who know exactly what they are buying.