Conventions Of My Music Magazine

After researching various music magazines aswell as fashion/celebrity magazines i have plenty of ideas how i would like my magazine to look and the conventions i would like to include within my own piece of work.

Front Cover;
The main part of a front cover is the image which will feature, all of the characters used i will ensure they are facing the camera which is a continuous theme which i have found within my research. I have also chosen to use a band as the main image rather than a single artist which is what the target audience of my magazine i believe would prefer. I have decided that unlike most magazines i would like to include a background behind the image instead of the magazines i have researched which usually keep it white.
The masthead of my magazine i have decided to follow the continuous trend of other magazines and keep it short, in capitals and red. Red is a very strong, bold colour which has many connotations to anger, violence, blood but also love and passion by the contrast in connotations this could represent how versatile the contents of my magazine is. Although i have followed the conventions of other magazines when referring to the font and style of my masthead i have changed the position. Instead of placing the masthead in the top lefthand corner of the screen i have chosen to put it straight bang in the centre of the front page. By placing it in the middle of the page this signifies domination which is exactly the message i wanted to connotate. The only problem i have recognised with placing my masthead in that position is if my magazine was placed behind other magazines on a shelf, the masthead would not be recognisable.
The characters are all placed ontop of eachother in the centre of the page, two of which are seperated by the masthead, the bottom of the page below one of the characters heads also features a heading which is the name of the band "Cursed Glitter" I chose the name as it is an antagonistic phrase with cursed having no connotations to the word glitter and vice versa. Above the heading which i used Dafonts.com to write is the subheading. The subheading is a quote taken from the interview which is included inside of the magazine.
Down the side of the cover i decided to list the names of some of the artists which feature inside the magazine, instead of the normal conventions which would place the plug at the bottom of the page along the bottom; again i have chosen to break the conventions.
The placing of the barcode, date and issue which have been placed in the top left hand corner are also other examples of how i have broken the usual conventions of a music magazine.

Contents Page;
I started off with re-using the masthead from the front cover as in my research of other music magazines i also realised they did. Although the placement of the masthead could not be in the centre of the page like how it was on the front cover i decided to follow the conventions of on sale music magazines and placed it in the left hand corner.
The heading of the contents page i decided to just use "Contents" this informs my audience what the page is aswell as fitting perfectly overlapping the masthead. The research i did showed that this broke the usual conventions of placement of header as it was usually at the side of the masthead o beneath it. Underneath the heading i used an image of the band which feature on the front page of my magazine this shows that it wasn't just a random act them being on the front and they feature all the way through the magazine. Both the two boys which feature on the outsides are loking towards the camera smiling which shows they are welcoming and not intimidating in any way. The girl which is seated in the middle of the two boys is laughing showing she is carefree and signifies that she doesnt really care of what she looks like to other people as she is confident in herself.
Beside the image is the editors note, i chose to include this as every magazine i researched had one, to keep it personal as a note from the editor to the individual reader i chose to wish them a happy new year which gives off a friendly view. Although i chose not to use an image of myself i did use a signature like font to sign my own name.
The research i did into magazines i found the majority had catagorised the contents of their magazines into features- things that may "feature" on the cover of the magazine aswell as being exclusives that you would not find usually inside, the other catagory "every month" which catagorises the contents of the magazine you could find inside every issue. I decided to follow this convention however usually in magazines a contents page lists the majority of the contents which can be found inside the magazine however a few of the magazines i researched had double contents pages so i decided i would put the top articles under both catagories on this page as it would be the first page the audience would see and list the rest of the contents on another page however i only designed the one page contents page.
I decided to keep the red colour scheme all the way through my magazine so i used it as the font colour for the names of the two catagories aswell as the numbers.
The page numbers i decided to make extra big in order to make them stand out, the bold red colour also contrasts with the black writing.

Double Page Spread;
I played around with the double page spread for a while branching out on different ideas but in the end i decided to go for a simple picture of all three characters and overlap it onto the other page. I did this so that the image dominated the article and therefore signifies the characteristics of the band and how well they are doing in the charts at the moment. Most images in magazines are of the people facing towards the camera, i decided to break the conventions and have them facing away looking towards where the sun is shining from, this could signify them looking towards the future.
I also decided to reincorporate the colour red so i used it for the headline "Exclusive", the page number and the name of the person who was speaking therefore all of these things would clearly stand out from everything else.
The masthead which i am using all the way through my magazine has also been placed in the top left hand side of the page.
I used the same font for name of the band "Cursed Glitter" on the double page spread as i did on the front cover and therfore could be seen as the same font on their merchandise. Instead of placing it straight across the page i decided to break the conventions and turn it on a 90 degree angle so it was down the side of the page. I find this really effective as it stands out against the colours in the image aswell as facing the way the characters are.
I decided to use columns to write the interview in as it fitted more of the interview in and it looks more professional.