Girls Magazine Analysis

In order for me to create my own girls magazine cover, I needed to home in on the different music magazines for teenage girls existing right now! By doing this research, I was able to see how different shapes, punctuation and camera angles could make a really big difference to the response the magazine recieves!


The three covers I chose were 2 from 'smash hits!' magazine and one from 'top of the pops.' These are the ones I chose because they all have different colour themes, picture types, shapes, layouts and unique selling points.

I analysed each cover in detail in my book, and discussed what made each cover sell to it's audience.

The first magazine cover ('smash hits!') has a photograph taken from a high angle which makes Britney look vulnerable, and in turn young like her target audience.
In the second cover, (Britney is on it again) she is looking straight on into the camera, but has her arms touching her hair and at the same time covering her ears. This seems to be saying that she isn't listening to the people around her giving advice when she's 'Partying till dawn, pub crawls and pampering' and being told to 'BEHAVE.'
The third cover is also one from 'smash hits!' but it doesn't have a picture of Britney on it this time! It has two separate pictures edited onto one page, which is very unusual. They are aggressive photographs of Pink! and Avril Lavigne. Even though they look fairly rebellious on the cover, the tag line 'Who'll win the battle of the rock chicks?' makes it more innocent and therefore reaches it's target audience of teenage girls due to the girly language.

Music Magazine Survey

To find out more about the music industry today and what girls aged 9-16 tended to like and dislike about music, I decided to do a music magazine survey.

I have put a paper copy in my blue book which is a copy of the ones I gave out, so that you can see the questionnaire like my answerees did.
The questions I asked were as follows:

• 'How important is music in your everyday life?' Which i did in a very unusual layout in surveys - I put the words 'Never Listen To It' 5 circles and then Music Is My Life' because then they could give their own opinion, but it also adds a modern twist and makes it a litte more interesting than just ticking every box.
• 'How do you access music to download?' I asked this question because I felt it was important to see how my target audience got hold of music. The reason being that in my magazine I can refer to the most popular way, and keep a wider majority of my audience able to relate.
• 'How do you listen to your music?' This was so I could see if CD's were still something the girls buy now that Itunes and Radio are available so easily!
• 'How much would you be prepared to pay for a music magazine?' This question was simply so I could see how much money my audience tended to have, and how much they would be willing to spend to help me work out what price to put my own magazine at.
• 'What's your dream job in music?' This was so that I could see what kind of careers girls dreamt of having at that age. It's really important that the magazine can help them reach for their dreams - magazines are there to inspire readers!
• 'What do you like and dislike about reading a magazine? Do you prefer reading online?' Obviously, this question is just so I could see how much people actually read magazines nowadays.
• 'Approximately how old were you when you started appreciating music?' I was sure that I wanted to aim my magazine at girls 9+, but I needed to make sure that the age was suitable and that the age was correctly matched with the intended magazine ideas.
• 'Have you ever attended a music festival?' I wanted to see how much impact festivals had on children these days because they are getting bigger and bigger each year! By finding out what festivals these girls had either heard of or been to, I knew whether to include anything about festivals in my magazine or not.
• 'What makes a dream festival?' As I said before, I wanted to know what girls were inspired by, and I thought after a really succesful festival season in summer 2010, it would be a really good time to find out seeing as it would all still be fresh in their minds!

I recorded all my results on Microsoft Excel and made them into pie and bar charts.

As you can see, I wrote about each graph and what they contributed to my magazine research.

By doing this survey, it has opened my eyes to the things girls do in regards to listening to music, buying magazines and enjoying festivals. I could have just written down my opinion for each and used those to build my magazine on, but if I use research, I have primary evidence that their selections are valid and worth putting into my magazine!

Audience Profile

I have decided to do my music magazine on the POP genre, and aim my magazine at girls aged 8-16.

I did a mood board in my book of all the artists and interests my audience would most likely have. It included typical girly things! The main things I put on my mood board were:

famous girly artists for girls to aspire to be

attractive male artists for girls to long for

make up - conventional of teenage girls

high school musical franchise - the biggest hit among teens over the last 3 years

friends - a social, comic and loveable series (girls tend to love it)

girly sleepovers (again, conventional of teenage girls)

The reason why I have chosen to do my music magazine on POP music rather than hiphop, R&B, classical or rock is because it's something that is really surrounding the music world right now, and I felt it would be a really good idea to make my magazine current.

It's getting harder to attract younger audiences these days in magazines because of the internet, television and mobile phones! Children tend to be able to watch music channels nowadays, find out gossip online and even on their phones! I thought it would be ideal now seeing as all of these gadgets are killing the magaizne industry, to make my magazine appeal to the age where even though they might have access to the internet and so on, they still may shop with their parents and more often than not will want to buy a magazine!



This photograph resembles the audience I'd most like to target. They are young, but still can understand a lot of the more developed english language. However, to make sure I still appeal to my younger audiences, I will use a lot of punctuation and simple explanations to make them feel comfortable in their ability to read the magazine and understand the concepts within it fully.







Cheryl Cole is one of the biggest stars of Britain and even the world right now, meaning she has become a household name. She has been a judge on the most watched reality show in the country, the X factor, and not to mention performed! She is surely someone who parents and children are familiar with, and therefore they (most likely) would not hesitate to allow their children to be associated with her music.
I think a lot of young girls would aspire to be her - she is the kind of artist I would definately be promoting in the magazine!



































Cheryl Cole:
On the left 2010's 'Messy Little Raindrops'
on the right, 2009's '3 Words'

Other examples of familiar and respectful artists to younger generations include The Saturdays and Rihanna.







This picture is feminine, girly and admirable - what girl wouldn't want to be relaxing on the beach in lovely clothes with her best friends?


































This is my favourite example of a girly cover - she has white all around her so even though youngsters won't recgonise it, it does mean purity, and they are normally very innocent at their age! Rihanna has a gentle expression on her face which creates a sense of happpiness and contentment, and of course the girly bright red, eye catching curls in her hair are nicely finished off with an expensive looking, beautiful headband. It has flowers on, making it very much a girly accessory. She also looks approachable and friendly, which makes it even easier for her to be within my target market. I think we all want to be like her!

Music Magazine Conventions

Before I create my very own music magazine, I need to know the conventions of magazines in general, but also the conventions of music magazines. As I have done all my initial research on magazines, I can use what I know to analyse the music genre, and build on my knowledge.

In my big blue book I analysed 6 different music magazines, with a very wide range of target audiences.

I realised that in a lot of cases, the age of the person on the front cover is around the age group the magazine is targeted at. It's really important that the cover appeals to the audiences they are aimed at, and don't attract the wrong ones!

For example, I looked at a 'top of the pops' magazine, which featured the two disney channel stars, Vanessa Hudgens and Zac Efron. This magazine cover features a lot of pink, blue and white. Pink is very girly, the royal blue stands out really well and the white represents purity. If this magazine cover was designed for older women rather than young teenage girls, it wouldn't reach it's audience specification very well at all. If it was to be for older women, the background would perhaps go to a very deep, elegant blue or a very pale blue. The pink would change to

perhaps a deep rose and the white text would stay white or change to black, depending on the colour of the background. Bright colours are sometimes seen as 'young' and 'vibrant' colours, which mean that they don't tend to appeal to the older aged audiences.

A lot of the music magazine covers I viewed seemed to be making the audience see an ideal being that they would initially want to become or 'be with'. The very promiscuous image of Britney on the front of Blender makes a female say: 'I wish I was that pretty' and a male say 'I wish I could have her' so it appeals to both female and male audiences.

The Rolling Stones magazine is using very much the same imagery as Blender. Only one brunette is pictured in all of these, which makes it seem as though blondes are thought to be more attractive in music to men.

It seems that men's magazines whether they are music/lifestyle/fitness all are able to feature a woman half dressed on the front cover in order to attract their audience.

In female music magazines, they had either girls, a girl and a guy or a guy, which are 3 scenarios that girls tend to live by.

My research has really helped me see the different styles there are already out there for music magazines, and let me see what kind of imagery attracted different audiences and why!

I can't wait to begin working on my very own music magazine!

Contents Page

The second part of our preliminary task was the Contents Page.
We needed to make one and design pages that would feature typically in a school magazine.
The first things I felt were crucial to a school contents page were:

• the school logo
• the title 'contents page'
• pictures to break up the text and appeal to all audiences - too much text would overwhelm the younger ones
• page contents descriptions

I felt that these things were very simple, and would appeal to all of my chosen audience.

The majority of the pages I chose to put on relate to improving the students' ability to learn and the enjoyment they get out of school.

I wanted to design my contents page in microsoft publisher, because it has a lot of tools that could assist me in making sure my outcome looked professional! As this is the preliminary task, it's okay for me to get things wrong, but for the real contents page, I'll need to make sure I get it all right!

By having a blackboard as a background, and the CONTENTS title in white chalk text, it made it all very much related to school. I wanted people to be making the connection all the while reading the magazine!

I put one picture of ellie on it and one of a group of schoolgirls and leaves, because everything is keeping in the autumn theme! Slanting them using the rotation tool on publication made them seem a lot more interesting and modern. I used 4 images to be labelled as the art gallery instead of say one because it really does spice up the page and make it a lot more interesting!

I think the contents page does work well as a school magazine's but I don't think it would bode well in a similar style for any other type! It works well because it's for such a wide audience, whereas other magazines tend to have a more direct target audience.

School Magazine Cover

For our preliminary task, we needed to design a school magazine cover, importing the magazine conventions we have learnt so far, and aim it at pupils, teachers, govenors and parents. Using publisher, I did a quick and easy design layout to see what kind of positions and font ideas I wanted on my real cover. I named my magazine school life, because that was the first name that came to me. It's simple, but allows you to understand the key point: It's all about your life at school!

I found that I really liked the idea of having 'SCHOOL' in bold letters, and then 'Life' in a white chalk on blackboard type text, which is traditionally linked to school. These ideas meant that I already had the masthead sorted, but I needed to work out what I wanted the cover to feature.
I brainstormed ideas, and came up with these cover lines:

• 'UNIFORM CARDS: YES OR NO?'
• 'Who's the form of the month?'
• 'Lunch Time Clubs!'
• 'Quote Of The Month'
• 'School Horoscopes: What's Yours?'
• 'Teachers Tips!'
• 'Club Watch: What are the top clubs right now?'
• 'Geography Field Trip!'
• 'Get organised this autumn!'

As you can see, 8 out of 9 cover lines have punctuation - it's key to making your cover seem more exciting. Because a lot of school pupils these days aren't too keen on school, I thought I would make it seem a lot more enthusiastic and in turn attractive to my audience. As my audience consists of pupils, teachers, parents and govenors, I couldn't aim it at a direct section of those 4 groups. For example, I couldn't have an article based on 'cheating your teacher into thinking you are ill' because of course teachers read it! That would be very discouraging and unsuitable for a school magazine anyhow!

In order for me to come up with an idea for my cover picture, I brainstormed the conventional school items and associations to help me on my way. Typically, I came up with:

• DETENTION!
• stationary (eg pencils, rulers, rubbers)
• Maths
• blackboard
• teachers
• friends
• homework
• organisation
• uniform
• waking up!
• being busy!

All of these will mostly remind someone who is currently in education or some others of school!

For my cover, I wanted to use some of the Autumn inspiration I had around me. The leaves were falling off the trees, and the autumn term of school was well under way. I felt that I should use this traditional connection with autumn to make the SEPTEMBER 2010 issue of my magazine.
When you first go back to school in september, you know that you must have all your books, your pencilcase, your uniform and your brain ready to go when that dreaded day calls the end to your summer. Unfortunately, we all know too well that if we aren't organised, we won't make it succesfully through our first day! I felt that organisation would be something really important at the beginning of term if ever, and so I should put it into my cover.

When you are unorganised, things are out of place, they are sprawled everywhere, and simply just not where you need them. In order for me to interpret that kind of imagery into my cover with the autumn theme, I needed to come up with an idea to pull the two together. When I combined the two things, it meant that I had things piled on top of leaves looking really unorganised. Of course, I wanted to keep my cover simple, and so decided that papers in a pile wouldn't be very simple, but also not very appealing either. I chose the very obvious connection with school, stationary, to be lying around in the leaves. It means that with items such as protractors, rulers, rubbers and pencils, your mind automatically wonders to school days. To combine this idea with autumn, it seemed to make the most sense to have the stationary spread out on top of a pile of leaves! It connects the two perfectly, but simply, which is exactly what I wanted.

In order to follow typical magazine conventions, I needed to have a picture of a person on the front. By choosing a female, I continue the theme of organisation as women are generally said to be more organised. I want to appeal to both female and male audiences, but because men never feature on women's magazine, yet women feature on men, it is more likely my audience will be broader if I have a woman on the front cover.

The person I chose to feature is called Ellie. She is 16 years old and has deep red hair (which matches the leaves perfectly!) and is very pretty! Even though it is a school magazine, and it shouldn't matter about looks, I still felt that having an attractive female on the front would increase the chances of it doing well. I asked her to not wear school uniform, and to wear a black or red top. She then comes ready with a black top covered in red roses. The red roses fit in really nicely with the leaves, which makes the top work really well.

I made a pile of leaves and Ellie laid down on them (I only made them around her head as we were only having a close up shot) and then made sure they were even on both sides of her head before adding the stationary. I chose to have my brighter pieces as they wouldn't get lost in the red leaves, but also wouldn't distract too much from Ellie and the cover lines. Having a shot of the cover person laying down is something I haven't seen be done on any magazine covers, so I thought it would attract more people due to it's originality.

I took a number of shots, because I needed to make sure that Ellie was directly connecting with the audience. A slightly low/high angle would cease to do that. I asked her to do a big smile for me, because it will make the onlooker smile and in turn make them feel happier about coming to school, which is what I want. After quite a few clicks of the camera, I managed to get the light, angle, leaves and smile right!

Here is the picture I will use on my cover:

To make sure all the text I needed to put on stood out clearly I had to work out what text would show up and what wouldn't! I felt that a bright orange would blend in too much with the leaves, but a bright yellow would stand out really well! I wanted the main school heading to be white because that was the only colour that would stand out without exception against the leaves. I increased the contrast slightly to make everything in the image stronger. This also made Ellie's eyes look a lot stronger which helped to engage her and the audience. Using photoshop, I added the text - I kept it the same throughout because it looked a lot neater and presentable, just like you should be at school!

Because the shot only needed to be really simple, there wasn't a lot I needed to change about it. The only things I needed to add were the text, barcode, price and date.

I chose my magazine to be free because then it will appeal to students. Remebering that the younger pupils won't have a lot of money, and so they would lose out on the privilege of the magazine if it was costly.

My Final Cover:

Magazine Conventions

The first thing I needed to do before I started working on any magazine ideas, was to analyse as many magazines as I could to understand the conventions and purposes of them.

To understand the differences between men's and women's magazines, I needed to analyse them separately. This is exactly what did, and it worked really well! It made me see how contrasting the two are, and how expectations for magazines aimed at the two sexes really differ.

The main conventions of a magazine are the layout (masthead, coverlines, left hand side holds majority due to stacking system in shops, main image, connecting colours), an image representing an idealised version of what the audience want to be like or have, price and barcode. When first seeing what holds a magazine together, you can easily think it is very simple and easy. But through all my analysis, I've found that there are a lot of ways you can be persuaded into buying the magazine without even realising! Sometimes it's as simple as a rhetorical question, eg "do you want to get rid of fat?" of course the majority of the world could answer that with a 'YES' and they buy the magazine. Sometimes they can put an ideal person for the age group on the front cover and immediately, you want to read the magazine in order to feel closer to that being; a lot of the covers I looked at had an attractive person on the front, which is exactly for that purpose.

The main points I found for men and women's magazines that are extremely contrasting were:

• Women's magazines tended to have a woman on the front fully clothed, smiling, and pulling a respectable pose. Men's on the other hand, sometimes had good looking, healthy men on the front, (for example in Men's Health magazine) or a very provocatively presented female who pulls a pose rather than smiles naturally.
• Men's magazines used capital letters a lot more than female magazine's did. Perhaps this is trying to represent STRENGTH for the men and gentle, feminity for the women.
• Women's magazines are a way for the female to escape, become a better person and improve themselves (in most cases). For men, they are usually revolved around funny stories, sex and outrageous behaviour (appealing to young men) and otherwise focused on fitness.