Music Magazine Codes and Conventions

Music Magazine

Front Cover Codes and Conventions

• Colours aren't as bright.
• Use mostly red, white and black
• Bold fonts
• Always has the band name on the front
• Free things (puffs)
• Picture over the band, not smiling conveys attitude
• Tagline
• Small images often of live bands

Codes and Conventions

Of a Double Page Spread

• Large quote at the start of the article
• Some things are highlighted.
• Large image
• 1 or 2 smaller pictures, these break up the article and make it easier to read.
• Drop capital starts article.
• Quote - by the picture
• 1st line is usually in bold, in capitals or larger than the rest of the article.
• Usually 2 or 3 colours used
• Close up photos
• Picture takes up about half the double page spread
• Title in capitals
• Pictures often bleed across the page as do headlines.
• Strapline or border often used to bleed across the double page spread
• Byline
• Artist names are highlighted.

Front Cover Photoshoot

This is the picture I chose for

my front cover.

I chose this picture to be on my

contents page.

I chose these picture to be on my contents page.

Completed Preliminary Exercise

This is my front cover, it follows most of the codes and conventions of a normal magazine front cover. It has a large photo as the background with a cover line that goes with its subject. It also has a large masthead usually the largest text on the screen as it is on my magazine front cover. It has some of the most popular stories down the right hand side of the magazine cover like mine does, it has usually 3 or 4 stories featured. I could have added more puffs, a price and a date to make my magazine cover follow more of the conventions.

I used Photoshop to create my front cover and used many of the tools in Photoshop to make certain features stand out such as my masthead, cover line and feature stories. On my masthead and coverline I also used an inner glow to make it stand out more. I used the 'lasso' tool on Photoshop to cut out my main images so I could blur the background and put the coverline behind her head.

This is my contents page , it also follows most of the codes and conventions of a contents page. It has a large picture like most contents pages and many small pictures. The pictures all have their relevant page numbers on too. At the top of the page is the title contents which takes up the whole width and again is usually the largest text on the page which my contents page also has. If I were to create it again I would add information about subscription or competitions and I would also add a editorial.

I created my contents page on QuarkXPress. I only used the text tool and the picture tool. I edited my text in quark by chaging the colours size and font type.

Plans

This is how I would like my contents page to look.

This is how i would like my front cover to look.