Research on a music magazine: Kerrang!

My first task is to research into a music magazine with another member of my Media AS group. The magazine we was given to research is Kerrang!; through this research we were given extra knowledge on layout, themes, masthead placement and other key elements which will help me plan and create my own music magazine. As my whole Media AS group performed this initial research task, and presented there research to the class; we were able to see other music magazines and how they target there audience through there layout, design, colour scheme and story's featured.
Magazines covered consisted of:

• Kerreng!
• Q
• Clash
• Top of the Pop's
• NME

and a few others.

Final Kerrang! presentation

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Front Covers
We looked at many different Kerrang! front covers during this research and picked out three different front covers for my PowerPoint presentation. Through these front covers we picked up on the conventions of the magazine. In particular, the placement of the Kerrang! masthead, the font used for masthead, placement of main image on front cover and there usually placement of pull quotes and puffs.


Contents Page
Throughout this research we focused on the conventions of contents pages in music magazines. The Kerrang! contents page  has a constant layout in each magazine using the colours black and yellow. Pull quotes are used in the contents page as well as hook lines and small sneak peaks into the featuring story's. A list of what is in the magazine is generally what the contents page actually is.

Double Page Spread
We were also given our first insight into analysing a double page spread, which we had not previously looked much into. Here we found that a double page spread does not necessarily have to contain two pages of writing or an interview only; the double page spread can also contain a large image on one page which connects or relates to the interview/story.

Overall this research has helped me, as well as the rest of the class in focusing on how music magazines target there audience with there front covers, featured story's and the general conventions which music magazines follow. This will help me and my class when planning developing and creating our music magazines.