PRODUCT RESEARCH

From what I found, by looking into music magazines based around musical theatre, was that the market size is pretty small, and not many existing products exist. However, I was able to find several magazines that do follow this genre, the only problem is, that it has been difficult finding all required elements of the magazines; front covers, contents page and double page spreads. Despite this I did manage to find one or two of these on the internet (I was unable to find any in a shop).

Broadway Magazine

The masthead is large and bold in order to stand out for the audience to be able to see easily, this follows the conventions of magazines in general and it overpowers the rest of the cover without drawing too much attention away from the rest. It’s coloured green which follows the colour scheme of this issue. I found that the colour scheme of the issue is based on the musical that appears on the cover, such as in this issue, green, to follow Elphaba’s skin colour.

The cover image is a picture of Elphaba from Broadway’s Wicked, this signifies the main article for the magazine. It is a live shot and doesn’t look like it was staged, she is in full costume and acting in a way she would on stage, this gives a greater sense of depth and reality to the magazine and draws the audience in more. She is well lit up and therefore stands out against the dark black, blue background of the image.

Broadway Magazine

Subheadings telling the audience things that are appearing in this issue, this is for the purpose of attracting them with things they would want to read. The main subheading is Wicked; you can tell this from how it’s in a bigger font size than the rest; this is because it is the main article for the magazine as we can yet again tell from the cover image. It also suggests that the target audience isn’t just lover’s of musical theatre but anyone in general because it’s telling the audience what the show on the cover is, in case they didn’t know. The subheadings alternate colours between bright green and a yellowy colour, this has a nice effect and gives the magazine a much smoother look.

Overall the magazine cover draws the audience in with it’s use of imagery and bright colours, whilst having plenty of information which doesn’t distract from the rest of the cover. The use of live imagery gives the audience a greater sense of the theatrical atmosphere without being at Broadway, making them want to go and watch the show.

Broadway Magazine

Text/picture ratio there is an even ratio between the two, half the contents page involves images while the other half contains a simplistic list of the articles and features within the magazine. This is so the audience can get a feel for what’s inside the issue before even reading it, because the written contents only gives limited information, the pictures expand on this.

Categories are used in this contents page, this breaks up the articles making the magazine easier to navigate. By doing this the magazine doesn’t have to make different sections to it, it can have a flowing range of articles, which are still separated into categories through use of the contents page.

Broadway Magazine Colour isn’t overly used in this

contents page, but the colour that is, is used well and to it’s fullest effect. They have used contrasting colours to make the writing stand out against the broad colours used to background the upper portion of the page. Yellow to stand out against the red, and white to stand out against the black. This could’ve been used to either add some brightness to the contents page or possibly follow the colour scheme of the issue.

Overall the contents page is well organised, and neat, this is one of the expectations that the magazine has of it’s audience, making it easy to read and nice to look at. The pictures used give it a fun lively atmosphere, which is what you think about when you think of the theatre. It’s not too busy and draws the audience’s attention through use of colour and the page layout.

Broadway Magazine

Picture: the image used on the dps is a posed shot from the musical in question. The characters are in costume and on stage. It doesn’t overpower or take up much space over the two pages, but is used for visual support and to help the reader keep interest in the article.

The Article dominates the two pages, suggesting the target audience to be older, middle aged people who have the time or patience to sit and read such a long article. By using large, red lettering for the masthead of the article, the audience’s attention is instantly drawn away from the other features on the page and straight to the article. There are also minor sub-articles on the page which shows the magazine is making good use of it’s space, and not appearing to be sloppy, this keeps with the idea that the magazine is neat and well organised.

Promotion: the magazine is using part of it’s space to promote things related indirectly to Broadway and it’s many musicals. Yet it still in keeps with the theme of the magazine and will appeal to the audience.

Broadway Magazine

The colour scheme is very simplistic and boring for the best part of the page, which is understandable as they do not wish to remove attention from the article too much. However the promotion at the side of the page is in abright vibrant purple,

this was done intentionally on the hopes that it would attract the audience’s gaze and make them interested in what it’s about.Writing style: the article is an interview with a popular actor discussing his Broadway debut. He is well spoken and what he speaks about is something fans of the musical will be able to relate to or understand quite well in the best. It gives them a sense of what starting out on Broadway is like.Overall the layout is quite simple, with a sophisticated

appearance and textual depth, two of the things that the target audience look for in a magazine. It’s not too busy so the page just flows and doesn’t distract the reader from what they should be doing, reading the article.

Kerrang! Magazine

Colour scheme: the colour scheme used on this cover of Kerrang! is typical and conventional for this magazine, the use of the four colours, yellow, red, black and white. The yellow and black stretching from left to right across the cover has the appearance of “keep out” tape that the police use, this could be representative of the “dangerous” rock elements in the magazine that only certain people that enjoy that music can handle and read. Whilst the white contrasts well with the black making it stand out vividly; and the red is a bright shocking colour that attracts the audience’s attention.The Masthead is rough and edgy to give it a more free look that isn’t neat, it’s explosive. The idea that the cover image is overlapping the masthead could suggest that the magazine is so popular you don’t need to see the masthead to know what the magazine is; either that or it could be to do with the idea that “You Me At Six Take Over Kerrang!” and it’s symbolic of their “take over”.

Kerrang! Magazine

The cover image is a posed shot of You Me At Six holding a megaphone, this shows that the magazine is almost screaming at the audience to buy it, this idea is reflected through the use of large, bold text which attracts the audience’s attention. Although it takes up most of the cover, the busy appearance of the magazine cover distracts and doesn’t keep the focus to one particular item.

Overall the cover is very busy, with lot’s of pictures and article mentions filling the cover, this is done to get the magazine ideas across to it’s impatient, young audience in a single page so as to keep them interested. It’s use of explosive headlines and imagery gives it an individual, exciting appearance which will attract an audience easily and interest them without the need for much text.

Kerrang! Magazine

Images: The images used on this page are all posed, which gives the audience a sense of inclusion with the magazine. The cover image is repeated on this made with a small note from the band to the side of it, this emphasises the idea that You Me At Six’s “take over” of Kerrang!

Categories: The contents are catgeorised so the magazine can be navigated easily and the audience can quickly turn to which ever articles they wish to look at. For instance; if they bought it for You Me At Six there is a category “YMAS Feature Special!” to allow the reader to head straight to it.

The colour scheme is continued across this page, however the red is slightly lesser than the amount featured on the front cover. The use of contrast is again played upon well on this page.

Kerrang! Magazine

Extras: This page contains two things which influence the audience to buy the magazine. The first is the competition in the top left hand corner of the page, giving away £350’s worth of guitar by a band that is popular among the target audience. This takes up over a quarter of the page so it’s one of the main points of the page, what the magazine feels is a big selling point to this issue. The second is in the bottom right hand corner, the magazine is giving away free clothing for subscribing to the magazine.Overall the contents page follows the magazine’s convention of being busy and crowded, whilst sticking to the conventional colour scheme of the magazine. Despite it’s busy nature the contents of the magazine is quite neat in it’s layout, making it easy to browse. However, it still has an explosive look surrounding it.

Kerrang! Magazine

Images dominate the dps both with a large corner, naturalistic image of YMAS and with lot’s of smaller posed pictures of one of the band members showing stuff about their lives that would interest a fan or the reader. Through the use of a

non original image “From Bus Til Dawn” they explain what the article is about without the need for any detail. The naturalistic photo gives the audience a feel for what life is like on the tour bus and feel like they’re included.

Colour: The yellow and black is on this page, following on from the contents and cover, this is because the two seem to have been used around YMAS from the start of the magazine and so it would seem appropriate to use the two on the article about the band.

Kerrang! Magazine

Picture quotes: Kerrang! have used humorous anecdotes to entertain the audience and engage them more with the article and band.

Article: The article is less of an interview as the quotes would suggest but more the band describing items in their tour bus. The idea of this, is to give the reader an insight into the band that they love and a further feeling of inclusion with their lives that they can only achieve through buying Kerrang! and reading this article.

Overall the dps has a scrapbook feel to it, which makes the magazine seem more casual and easy to look through, rather than giving the impression that the audience has to focus solely on reading the lengths of text. Compared to the contents and cover pages the dps doesn’t seem too busy but the use of lot’s of pictures gives it the impression of being quite busy.

Q Magazine The cover image is a posed shot of Take That, they are piled on top of each other, laughing and clearly enjoying themselves, this could be framed like this because it shows how music can be fun and enjoyed with friends and how it should be celebrated in a group of people. They are all dressed in matching clothes, black leather jackets, this symbolises their union as a band whilst following one of the house colours for Q magazine, black.

Other articles, within the magazine are featured on the cover, Green day for instance, this is put on to show the diverse nature of the magazine’s genre’s; by comparing it with the main article of Take That, because Green Day and Take That have two completely different genres.

Q Magazine

Colour scheme: the colour scheme for the magazine is red, white and black, with some gold thrown into the cover of this issue. Black, white and red are used because they are gender neutral colours which has no specific aim, this translates to the wide, diverse range of music used in the magazine.

Overall the cover shows a good image of music, symbolising the enjoyment it gives to people, whilst having a neat yet slightly busy layout. The layout could be like this to show the different music style’s it portrays within, random from the neat harmonic singing, to the heavier more explosive music. Yet since the two work in harmony neither the neatness or the busyness overpowers the other.

Q Magazine Images: there are plenty of pictures used on the contents page, posed and naturalistic, ranging from individual singers to groups to bands, it even involves the front cover on the second of the contents page. This just shows the diverse range of acts that are included in the magazine.

Double page: the contents is spread across two pages, this stresses the mass of articles contained in the magazine while showing the audience how popular and big the magazine is, so big in fact that they can spread their contents page across two pages.Layout: the layout is well spaced giving it an easy viewing feel but it quite busy at the same time meaning they have fitted a lot of information on this page alone, but that again expresses the quantity of articles and items within the magazine.Colour scheme: the colour scheme is maintained on

this page, however, the gold has been removed as it is probably not part of their conventional colour scheme.

Q Magazine Categories: the contents page is not itemised according to certain categories, but instead is a continuous list of the articles contained inside, with only a single break up, which is the space in between the two lists. But even this space is filled with parts of the contents.

Overall there is a lot going on because of the amount of pictures used on this page, but this is countered by the tidy use of listed articles. The page numbers on the pictures are sized differently depending on how important to the magazine the article is, for instance the main article is the largest number on the page. It has a scrapbook appearance to some of the pictures, but these are only the live images so it may be done intentionally to separate the live articles from the posed articles.

Q Magazine The article: is very textual and written in full paragraphs, this tells us that the audience is of an older more patient age, willing to do quite a bit of reading. There are smaller, sub articles at the side of the page giving small amount of information about singers and bands, called “Sound Bites”.Alongside this, there is

a profile of “Miles Kane” a singer who was once in a group but has now gone solo, and has a small quote about how he is finding it being a solo artist.These articles are all set to interest a part of the audience, by not just having one article on the page it can achieve this a lot easier.Colour scheme: the colour scheme, is continued yet again in every aspect of the double page spread, and therefore easily attracts the reader’s gaze and attention.

Q MagazineImages: Most of the images on the dps are posed pictures of the bands/singers showing us who the articles are about. However, one or two of the images are naturalistic and so give the audience some depth into their lives and what it is to be at rehearsal or watching them perform.

Overall It has a tidy layout and is well organised, following the colour scheme of the magazine. It has plenty on the page to keep the reader entertained and occupied, however, it does this without making the page too busy or full; they have done this by the use of a large written article. The use of quotations allows the audience to feel included and engaged with the band and the magazine.