Challenges Facing the Magazine Industry

A big challenge that I feel is facing the lack of available content for magazines, for example let's look at the biggest media event of the summer: Miley Cyrus's performance and the VMAs (Video Music Awards).

This was big, everyone had heard about this. It was covered on every network, it was all over the internet and all the magazines and newspapers were talking about it.

Supposing this (or something similar to this) had happened 40/50 years ago, when it would not have been shared quite so easily. Modern advances help information travel so quickly these days, video sharing websites and social networks, but without them this performance would have only been seen by  a very small amount of people. This is where magazines come in, they would help people who didn't see the outrageous event by explaining it too them. While some magazines still do this, it's very brief and probably skipped by the readers. By not being able to explain what actually happened you miss out on anything actually substantial or interesting to know. A lot of the articles covering Miley Cyrus's performance were double page spreads full of screen shots of her performance and various reactions to what happened. The usual reaction of this from the reader is this: 'Ha. They know that happened. I know that happened.' and then they move on when they've given the not-so-exclusive photos a two-second glance.
The internet is brimming with with everything that magazines cover, which really doesn't leave anything new for them to cover. So, the challenge for them is to find some interesting content which almost no-one else knows much about, the only problem is that doing that is pretty much impossible.

Contents Page

Analysis of a magazine contents page

This is my analysis of a metal magazine contents page, I liked how it was so clear and still looked well designed and visually pleasing.

I really liked that it had two columns, one for the features and one for the regular pieces, that's something I think I would like to put into my contents page. Something I wasn't too keen on was the amount of photos in it though, I liked that it was visual but the contents page isn't an area where people want to look at photos, it's more of a reference page.

This is my contents page. I didn't like the look of having too many photos but I made it slightly more visual by adding the design in the background and one photo. I found it difficult to think up all the articles but the professional contents page I looked at was helpful, so I used the same kind of format.

Double Page Spread Research

The give me a greater insight as to what the conventions of a double page spread are, I decided to look at a couple.

This one is a double page sread from NME:
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And this one is Kerrang!:

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Semiotic Music Magazine Analysis

Here is my final semiotic music magazine analysis, it is for Metal Hammer magazine:

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Semiotic Music Magazine Analysis

Here are my first two semiotic analysis of music magazines:

This one is Kerrang!, and this one is NME.

I went back on my decision to look at GQ magazine once I had decided to make a metal magazine cover, so my third is taking that little bit longer and should be up very soon.

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

Today I took a brief break from my preliminary task to have a look at 'Maslow's Hierachy of Needs'. This is quite simply a theory first proposed by Abraham Maslow, and American physcologist. His hierarchy is usually shown in a pyramid, with basic fundimental life issues shown at the bottom and 'self-actualisation' at the top. 'Self-actualisation' is a term commonly used in physcology, it is used to describe the 'motive to realise one's true potential'.

As you can see, the needs associated with 'self-actualisation' are needs to do with skills or intellegence.
The idea behind this pyramid is that you can't have fulfilled a need unless the block below has been fulfilled, for example, you can't be safe unless you have all of you physiological needs, or you can't be creative if you don't have confidence.
When you add media, particularly magazines into this equation, it becomes clear that the purpose of the content in magazines is to add something to us, be it intellegence, or from the self-actualisation block, morality or acceptance of facts. 

Magazine Cover Analysis

I chose two magazine covers (a fashion magazine and a car magazine) to annotate to give an example of the normal tactics used in a cover.

On this particular cover there is a clear colour scheme which coordinates with the image and the time of year (this issue is from July). There are two seperate coverlines that talk about sex, the publishers know that sex sells. The puff helps sell the magazine by adding value to it, people want to know if buying this magazine will save them money, make them better looking or a more desirable person in general.

This cover is quite different to the first one, the obvious difference being that the image depicts two shiny, expensive looking cars instead of a model. On the banner at the bottom of the cover it lists some cars, helping people figure out if this issue is of interest to them or not.

The target audience for this cover is young men (18 -35) with spare time and money on their hands, or men who can't afford but want to look at these expensive cars. It's similar to the first cover in the way that it tells you by buying the magazine you're adding value to yourself. Cosmopolitan is a woman's magazine with a similar age range of about 18 to 35. Both magazines share the same target class as the magazine covers don't brag about their 'good value', but hide the price near the barcode, making you look closer.