An overview of the industry

IPC Media produces over 85 iconic media brands, with our print brands alone reaching almost two thirds of UK women and 44% of UK men – almost 27 million UK adults – while our online brands collectively reach 20 million users every month.IPC's diverse print and digital portfolio offers something for everyone, with a focus on three core audiences: men, mass market women and upmarket women.IPC's men's portfolio (IPC Inspire) comprises a wealth of leisure brands including Country Life, Horse & Hound, Rugby World and Decanter, as well as lifestyle brands including Nuts, Mousebreaker and NME. IPC's a mass market women's division (IPC Connect) comprises famous women's weeklies including Look, Now, Chat and Woman; TV entertainment brands including What's on TV, TVTimes and TV & Satellite Week and, online, the goodtoknow network amd upmarket women's division (IPC Southbank) comprises luxury fashion brands including Marie Claire and InStyle, lifestyle brands including woman&home and essentials and home interest brands including Ideal Home, Livingetc and housetohome. You can clearly see from reading this data that IPC is the biggest mass media production mainly targetting males and females from middle class backgrounds.

within the idustry there is smaller companies such as Bauer. Bauer Media is a division of the Bauer Media Group, Europe’s largest privately owned publishing Group. The Group is a worldwide media empire offering over 300 magazines in 15 countries, as well as online, TV and radio stations. Bauer distribuites many womens and mens entertainment magazines such as closer,Grazia, heat , kerrang, Q, mojo, and empire and Bauer Media produces market-leading men’s lifestyle magazines with a 33% share of the sector, this is quite an advantage because they will not always take full control over your magazine.

My review for an NME style magazine

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Rihanna - The Fetish for Red
The new image of the insanely hot 22 year old Rihanna, influences others fetishes to change their image. Ri – Ri has most recently transformed her image with a red Barnet, giving her a fiery new attitude, where somewhere along society Ri-Ri has influenced this transformation upon others. Is this the case? Or could this be the catwalks new fashion trend this season that is influencing top notch celebs as well as society. Shops have reported that 70% of red hair dyes are being sold and many stores are selling out. Ri – Ri had said “I don’t like the edgy clothes anymore!” and supposedly wanted to take that edginess to new extremes through a different hairstyle. I wonder what may be her next fiery transformation. Carla Smith

Analysing NME double page spread

Looking at this double spread article, the type of music fit’s the audience ages, in comparison to the band. A drop cap has been used to make the article appear more structured to show where the article starts and finishes. A pull quote has been used to attract the viewer to part of the article, the pull quote in this article is quite interesting as it’s associated with “youth rebellion” and connotes the middle image. A timeline of pictures of the lead singer over the years has been included to show his change of image over the years, to fit his target audience, with a bottom line time line, of the history/facts of previous albums. This double page spread is a band/artist feature, giving an article of a band including interviews. The colours in this are very minimalistic and consistent only using orange and black throughout the double page spread, to not distract any attention away from the purpose of the article focused on “my chemical romance”
which is also the main image on the front cover. I noticed that the house style throughout this article was very similar in order to keep consistency throughout. This double page spread included Bold relevant titles at the top of the page of pull quotes, subheadings or introductions to the article, Large colourful pictures of the featured band and gig audience, bright colours, and text that is always in columns.

Analysing Blender Magazine

Blender magazine is an American based music magazine that focuses upon the sub-genre of pop music. This is aimed at a younger teen audience as they have used a colour of orange in the catchy title Blender to create a connotation of fun and brightness making this title cover stand out predominantly against the white back ground. This looks as though this magazine is aimed more towards a male audience as they have many featured magazine covers from my research of women provigitavely dressed and in minimal clothing which is usually used in order to attract male attention. Looking at this magazine cover you can also see that this may be aimed more towards a male audience just by looking at the body positioning and facial expressions the model is showing almost seen as being seductive and used as being sexual objects.Blender magazine, published by Alpha Media Group, is a fast growing music magazine, which covers all genres of music from rock and pop, to hip-hop, country and R&B. Alpha media group is known for most successful modern men's lifestyle magazines in America Subscribers are young and ambitious with disposable income to spend on music, electronics, entertainment, clothes, new cars, travel, and much more. Blender connects with its readers and delivers in-depth articles, insightful reviews and broad entertainment coverage. It's fast, funny and informative. Blender reflects the eclectic musical tastes of today's generation in a witty and irreverent style .From my research I found that the public profile for blender would be based on the Ages 18-34 of around 75% of the population, their median household income would be $53,000, and 64% of them would be college graduate in which 67% would later on be employed. Only 26% of the population would be reading this magazine and 67% would be men. This is because some articles in this are featured to be aimed towards women for example recent gossip on celebrities. Blender always uses the same front cover title font however change the colour of it based on the image and colour scheme of other features.Usually in which the subheadings will match the colour of the magazine title. Looking at the colour fonts of this magazine blender usually uses only two different colours, and generally the master head title is always the same to show recognition of the magazine. The general presentation of this magazine is structured in columns to make it easier to read in a flowing sequence. Pull quotes have been used on the cover from celebrities to attract the viewer to read the double paged spread on the article.

Analysis of NME contents page

I have chosen to analyse an NME contents page as this is closely relates to my chosen area of music genre of indie however my magazine will be aimed towards a female audience as NME is aimed more towards a male audience and 73% of the audience are males who read this magazine . NME uses only black font for the contents page, several different scatter photographs with a corresponding number for each feature, many of these photographs are sub headed with a pull quote from the featured artist or band given in the interview, which are all divided up around the main image, into separate categories making it appeal more professionally. It used numbers with a bold font in a corner of all of the featured pictures, which makes it easier to find the featured articles. This contents page has also included a column of added featured articles which are less important in a separate category. This contents page of NME is laid out very similar to the way a newspaper would be laid out using similar fonts, columns and newspaper pages instead of glossy pages which would on the other hand be more expensive. This is also because the magazine promotes itself as a serious music journalistic magazine. This is evidently shown in NME’s own breakdown of readers, from the audience readers being middle class, educated and 80% of readers being serious about music. NME have used an advertisement in the bottom right hand corner based on saving 36% a year on the full price if you pay £74.99, this will automatically catch the reader’s attention as the colour used to advertise this is red, and readers believe they will be saving money.

Analysing Fashion,Music,Style

FASHION.MUSIC.STYLE is a publication that promotes reviews and inspires new talent in the fashion and music industries. They feature unsigned bands alongside established artists, interviews, fashion shoots, events and reviews. The theme of this music magazine is indie based with elements of punk, rock, ska and electro. Think: humorous, witty, tongue in cheek, fun, fresh, exciting, shocking, innovative, stylish, bizarre and engaging. Each issue gives away a FREE CD featuring two tracks from each band/artist in a regular Five Unsigned feature PLUS bonus tracks. The A5 publication is available to purchase from selected stores worldwide Europe, USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Japan costing £3 in the United Kingdom. Whereas an issue in Europe would cost £5 and the rest of the word £6.00. This is a new fashion and music bi-monthly magazine at Punk Fashion Music Style. The aim is to promote unsigned bands and upcoming designers and fashion folk. This magazine is aimed at a young target audience as the covers feature young models in their teens. However the fact that each of the magazines covers are creative and art based may make this magazine aim more towards young students. They have advertised a free cd with each magazine cover to attract the attention of young viewers and used brightly coloured graphic fonts to make this more appealing. The band that are featured on this front cover is the Klaxons, HMV describes Klaxons as "acid-rave sci-fi punk-funk, in which they are described as one of acts being referred to as New Rave, Though the band's sound is rock-based, they draw upon some less common influences. Looking at this magazine it looks very similar to NME, in which the audience could also be similar. From my research of NME I found that approximately 34% are working full time, 18% are working part time and 26% of these are full time students. The audience would be 73% male and 27% female. However looking at fashion music style you can clearly recognize that fashion is quite an important aspect for this magazine, due to the key term fashion and style being dominantly mentioned quite a lot and being placed at the top of the magazine. This magazine has more of a journalistic feel to it as this is a more creative magazine, and the layout is very similar to NME as they both appear to be using the same genre of music. looking at a coulple of magazine covers, from fashion, music , style the master head of the magazine generally stays the same to make the magazine recognisable each time.

Analysing my college magazine cover

When putting together my college magazine, I tried to use a front image in which I took in the studio that clearly targeted my audience as students through using a young attractive model. I included the features of what would be involved in the magazine coming from each capital of the college name, using the findings from my magazine questionnaire of what people in my college would be interested in reading. To attract the viewer’s attention I have used brightly coloured fonts which advertise a free CD with every issue and a student banner underneath my magazine title. I also used a catchy subtitle putting “East Norfolk goes open”, suggesting that this is a new magazine to be opened for students. I have used graphic fonts of magazine snippets in the title “student gossip” in which my student respondents in my questionnaire stated they wanted. I made sure I included the student sixth form logo and bar code, to make this structured as possible like a magazine should be. I decided to make the first issue free as I found out that many students would not be willing to pay for a college magazine. Whilst putting together my contents and front cover, one aspect I did recognise afterwards was that they needed to match themes, on the basis of fonts, colour scheme and images to look consistent and well structured. Because I had made my contents page before my font cover, my magazine did lack consistantsy with it looking quite busy with ideas.