Detailed Research into Forms and Conventions

For my magazine I have decided to focus on a theme that includes all sorts of music in the mainstream, not just pop music though. Music from Girls Aloud, to Muse, anythi

ng that most people would be able to know. For my research I needed to find 3 magazines that fit my criteria of Mainstream Explorers, Jicnar scale : C1/B. I chose to do Billboard, Q Magazine and Mojo as I believe that these magazines follow my criteria for my target audience.

I found that all of the covers of the magazines in which I researched into all had quite well-known artists on the front of them, this is something that I could try and do for my magazines also.In all of the magazines they all tend to feature the same sort of things, including gig reviews, interviews and album reviews. This could be something that I could take on board when it comes to writing my double page spread. All of the magazines also have advertisements for tours of the artists that would be featured.

The language used in most of the magazines is language that a range of people would be able to understand. All of the magazines also use slang to try and appeal that bit more to their audiences.

The contents pages in my magazines all were really quite plain and simple. All of them included features that were in every magazine, reviews and then one offs ( like interviews etc ) I think that as all of my magazines seemed to have quite a plain and simple layout for their contents page, I should do this aswell when I make my magazine.

The double page spreads in my all my magazines were also very similar. All of them were very wordy and then with one large picture of the artist who was being questioned. However, in Mojo magazine they included more pictures which I think would keep the audience interested instead of having to read a long block of text. The colours used in the double page spreads were also very plain, blacks and whites, this would connote that they are serious about what they are having to write.

I found that not many magazines have a multi-genre theme and I decided that this could be something that I could do, as it is quite unusual and there aren't many around. By doing this research I believe it has helped set the foundation of my magazine and what would appeal to my targeted audience.