Analysis of Magazine Institutions:

Bauer Media Group:

The Bauer Media Group is a German based company that operates in 16 countries, the company was founded in 1875. There is a worldwide circulation of Bauer Media's products, and some 38 million magazines a week are sold by Bauer. Magazine titles such as Q and Mojo are along their list of successful titles along with many other genres and types of magazines. On Bauer's website they describe both Q and Mojo as being:

"MOJO is the world’s largest UK music magazine, delivering a monthly dose of world class journalism and iconic photography to an audience of extremely passionate music consumers. If you’re featured in MOJO, you matter"

"Q, the UK’s biggest selling music monthly magazine, sits at the heart of a cross-platform brand that celebrates the biggest stars in rock and roll and brings you the most exciting new artists. The Q brand has developed a worldwide reputation as a trusted and premium quality voice of musical authority amongst fans, musicians and the music industry alike - one that is founded upon Q's unrivalled access, world-beating exclusives and outstanding production values."

They have a very strong reputation and they also publish magazines along the same lines of genre that I will be doing which is very reassuring for me to see a media company such as this that I know has a very reliable fan base across it's magazines. This production company is possibly one of my many options that I would choose if I was to publish my magazine because I know that a lot of people would have access to it, also it would help the sales of the magazine as well because more people would be buying it every month. I would be very interested to see how my magazine would be distributed within this company because I am making something that will probably only be inspired and bought by a very niche market, so I would like to hope that this company would push my magazine forward and give it the publicity that I desire.

IPC Media Group:

IPC Media is one of the UK's leading magazine and digital publisher. They publish magazines such as NME, which would be the one that I would most appeal to. On IPC's website they describe NME as being a men's music magazine. This is a very different perspective to what I originally thought the target audience was. They describe NME as: 

"NME is the longest published and most respected music weekly in the world. Every week it gives its readers the most exciting, most authoritative coverage of the very best in new music, including award-winning features, the latest releases, live reviews, the definitive guide to the best new bands in its Radar section, as well as a regular look back through the magazine's incredible 60 year heritage."

IPC Media has an incredibly long portfolio of magazines that all have been successful over the years. They sell over 350 million copies of their magazines every year. This to me as well as the Bauer Media Group, like a very interesting and possibly very successful institution to publish my magazine from because they seem to cater for a lot of my target audience. With the likes of NME under their belt, IPC Media would probably be my first choice of publishing company to go down because they are incredibly reliable and successful and would give my magazine the right amount of publicity and attention that would help me get the readership and target audience that I desire. 

Colour Palettes and Fonts:

Colour Palette and Font Analysis by laurennboltonn

Language Register:

The language used throughout the main cover of this magazine is very witty however it also gets straight down to the point. The target market for this magazine would be people from about the ages of 16-25, so in that case what NME has to do is to really be able to connect to that audience; they seem to do that by selecting all of the right artists that this audience would generally listen to such as The Maccabees and Kasabian. This also relates to my magazine audience because I am also going to be focusing on the indie/alternative/rock genre, so really I can take inspiration from NME as to how they style their language throughout the cover and the rest of the contents of the magazine. I would say though that this type of language is more aimed at the male market and this can be inferred because of for one thing the fairly masculine layout, with the blue and red colours. However there is nothing on it that is really stereotypically female type of language. So you could say that NME is a unisex magazine because they want to appeal to both audiences however in doing that they have to cancel out the over the top stereotypes that most magazines do (such as the fashion magazine, Vogue, as it is strictly a women's only magazine). The typography also used on the cover is very clear and bold, this means that when in a shop you can clearly see which artist are in the magazine and whether it is a good idea to purchase or not. I think somebody who is not really interested in the indie genre would probably not be attracted to this cover because it is fairly simple but also busy and the colour palette used on the colour would not be something that they would really be interested in.

The language register on this magazine would be fairly similar to NME however because this is a higher quality, monthly magazine it means that they have more time to be able to produce a more sophisticated design and therefore text. Rather than NME, Dazed has decided to put longer cover lines on the page to show more of what is inside the magazine. This type of language, with the almost softly spoken nature of the text, represents its target audience because the people that would buy the magazine the most would be students or people older that are more interested in things more than just the artists themselves whereas NME just gets straight to the point about what is happening in the world of the artist. I would say that the language used on the front would attract a female audience because of the complexity of the coverlines and this would probably catch a women's eyes more than it would to a male eye. Also the colour palette is very much more soft and delicate than the NME cover which could suggest that Dazed are trying to attract the female readership. 

Music Magazine Playlist:

25 Word Pitch

Magazine Name:

The name I have chosen for my magazine is 'ICONOCLAST', I chose this because of the rebellious nature behind it which I feel is what indie and alternative music is like. The word 'iconoclast' actually means:

"One who attacks and seeks to overthrow traditional or popular ideas or institutions."

I wouldn't say that I believe that this genre of music is attacking anything, however I do feel as though indie music in particular sets out to challenge the views of modern music, especially chart music. In saying that though, I did just choose the name because I was generally inspired of how I wanted my magazine to look when I heard the name. I felt as though I could just picture that on the front of a magazine and it inspired me further to do more research and planning just for myself, which will be coming up on this blog soon. I want to look at as well the other meaning behind the name; "One who destroys sacred religious images." For this I have been inspired by stained glass windows and the colour palettes normally used on them and that has also sparked new ideas in my head that I will develop in the coming weeks.

Fashion and Styling related to my Genre:

The fashion of my genre is a crucial part in not only how I style my models but also how I want the actual design of the magazine to look like because the fashions influences the graphical design as well as you have to get the colours right in order to spark an interest in my chosen audience. The style that is inspiring me the most is quite classic shapes that I can hopefully get across in the actual design of my blog, I have created a Pinterest board that showcases all my ideas for fashion and styling and  this has become really helpful for me, not only does it develop my own style tastes however that has a knock on effect in giving me inspiration for what I want to achieve in my magazine.

Follow Lauren Bolton's board Inspiration on Pinterest.