Magazine Analysis Part 1.

Rocksound

Rocksound is a monthly rock magazine that focuses on different sub-genres of rock, such as metal, indie and hardcore.

It’s title Rocksound instantly shows the reader that its a rock magazine, and as it simply says rock, it suggests that it includes a variety of different types of rock. Rock sound is also a way of saying that something is solid, which suggests the magazine is a solid music magazine, that is reliable for rock audiences to find good music, and read up on their favourite artists, all for £3.80

It is published by Rock Sound Ltd, which is a company set up alongside the magazine as an independent publisher. It doesn’t publish anything else. Their readership was 20011 at the end of 2009, and the circulation was put at around 23000.

The target audience for Rocksound is 14-17 year old teenagers, and they manage to cater very well for both sexes, as they have such a variety of music in them.

By looking at the cover, this can be shown in the fact that they have a photo of Oli Sykes, who is a popular pin-up among female teenagers, however, his brutal looks also appeal to male audiences who enjoy his music.

Rocksound really involves potential readers with their frequent free posters and CD’s, which allow the readers to feel like the magazine is giving them something good for their money.

The image of Oli Sykes is quite contrast in light and dark, which links in with the question "saint or sinner?" to the side of him. His pose is very normal, to show that the focus is on him as good or bad person, and not about his looks or the publicity.

The magazine cover has a specialist font rather than colour that they always choose to use, which defines it as an individual magazine. They put a lot of band names that are featured in the magazine on the cover, which appeals to a lot of fans if they see bands they like on the cover. It also shows how diverse the magazine is in terms of the sub-genres of rock.

It’s quite a big magazine, a lot bigger than Kerrang! which is its main competitor, however, it is a monthly magazine whereas Kerrang! Is weekly, so it just 4 weeks worth in. Because its quite a big magazine, its looks very quality, and like it’s filled with good articles, and is very glossy, and normally contrasts a dark overall cover with the light pictures and text to really make them stand out.

Our First Task

Evaluation:
I tried to make my magazines target audience a mix of students that are males and females. I attempted to do this by using fairly standard colours and design, with pictures of males and females, so that it appeals to both. I hope that it would be also be a good design that parents would like to read as well as students.
Doing the work, I was new to photoshop, so I picked up a lot of new skills with the software. I learnt how to cut out images, so that you can remove things like backgrounds or bits of the pictures that you don’t want. I also learnt how to get the bold bits around text, which make it look like it sticks out of the page a bit, which makes it stand out a lot more than average text. Another technique I learnt was changing the gradient of the background so it looks like it fades out, which I really like, as it adds some interest to what would be a plain background.
If I were to do this task again, I probably would have taken my photo somewhere more interesting, so I could have used the background, which would have been a lot more interesting for potential readers. I would also have taken more photos generally, so I could have used them to show more detail about what was in the magazine. For my main piece, I will try to take a lot more photos, in an interesting environment, so that it becomes a lot more visually attractive to potential readers.