General Research - mixmag

The purpose of this peice of work is to design and produce a front cover together with a contents page and a double page spread for a new music magazine. In order to get some ideas for my magazines i have chosen to research MIXMAG. MIXMAG is the worlds leading dance music and clubbing magazine. My magazine will target the same audience and cover the same subject matter. I intend to consider colour, text, font, layout, size, graphics and language.

MIXMAG is published by Developlment Hell ltd. This is a independant media company based in central London. The company also publish's another magazine called WORD and runs a social networking site at www.dontstayin.com. MIXMAG was launched in 1982 and was aquired by Development Hell in December 2005 and re-launched in April 2006. The circulation has increased over the past 6 years currently standing at 37,139 and has a readership of 276,000. The magazine is published on a monthly basis. The quality of the magazine has improved incorporating glossier pages, a perfect boundspine and better production values.

The magazine


Mixmag promotes mainstream club music including the following genres:

Drum and Bass
Electro
Trance
Dance
Grime
House
Dubstep

The target audience is young broadminded sophisticated and sexy adults aged in the late teens or earlier 20's. Most of the pictures in the magazine suggests that the audience is fashion concious and most proberly single. It suggests they enjoy clubs and just generally having a good time at partys ect. The magazine is also aimed at potential muscians possibly who are interested into start DJ'ing. The magazine has personal profiles on celebrities and popular DJ's from around this world. The magazine is very edgey and bright which aims it at young livley people. The readership are pursuing fun and pleasure.

The selling price of the magazine is £4.50. It is distributed nationally through a network of newsagents.

Front Cover Analysis

The title of the magazine is MIXMAG. The title is displayed at the top of the front cover. The title is formed from an abreviation of two words mixing and magazine. Mixing is a technique for creating different sounds the abbreviated title is catchy and designed to appeal to the target audience.

The magazine title is the brand logo or mast head, the design remains fixed but the colour changes from month to month. The colour is bold and stands out. The front cover also coveys the strap line "The worlds biggest dance music and clubbing magazine". The strapline is situated immediatley above the masthead. The logo is all in lower case with an embelishment on the letter 'i'.

The strapline informs perspective buyers about the subject matter. The main image is the person being featured in the magazine. The direction of the gaze is towards the reader, the purpose of this is to engage and personalise the cover.

There are different sizes of text on the cover of the magazine to reflect the importance of the features and also to make the cover more interesting. The colours are bold and vibrant again the purpose behind this is to grab the readers attention. The front cover is very glossy which emphsises the luxury quality and appeals to the aspirational disires of the readership.

There is a free CD on the front cover promoting new music from popular bands. There is a note on the front cover indicating that a free CD is gifted with every monthly publication.

The language on the cover includes question marks to provoke thought and interest. The style of the language is informal and relates to the world of clubbing and dance music. This is aimed at the target audience.

The front cover includes a heading 'PLUS' detaling the other celebrities featured in the magazine to broaden the appeal. There is a motif of a running man signifing 'Don't stay in' encouraging the readership to go out and visit clubs.

Finally there is a bar code present in the bottom right hand corner of the magazine for scanning purposes.

The bar code is situated in the bottom right of the front cover, simply showing the price and the date of the magazine.

Quotation marks and exclamation marks are used on the front cover to generate a chatty and sociable style.

Double pages

The first page i had scanned in was from page 72 in the magazine. It is very graphic. The colour of the bold text fits in with the colours in the photograph, the main theme of the sentences is a different colour to the rest of the statement. The picture contains police officers in high visible coats, also with riot armor. The picture is related to the text, as the text talks about a drug raid.

On the other page the picture continues, and at the bottom is shows text with the story wrote on it. The text is fairly informal and in my opinion it is biased towards the owner of the night club, as what would proberly be expected in a club based magazine. The story is informative and fairly informal, its not too long and the font is about of a size thats big enough to read. The font colour is white with a black background, this is too contrast the two colours easily. The body of the text is not that big, its 3 columns wide and about 30 sentences deep.

Inside the second paragraph is a photograph, showing the owner of the club being taken away by police officers from his club. The photograph shows the clubber in fairly modern and informal clothes and looking very displeased. The luminous clothing that the police are wearing has been emphasised to look a lot brighter and to contrast more with the jet black background, i believe this is to catch the readers attention.

The image above the text has been edited, so the yellow flower in the background stands out more to make the picture unique and in a way to me the flower shows the club to be in a happy and friendly state however with a angry police officer in front of it, it contradicts the clubs atmosphere and respective manor.

Above the man body of text is a lightly bolder and bigger font explaining the first few lines of the text and what the main story is about.

Contents page

The contents page shows the mixmag logo, the size is smaller than the front cover but the design is the same reinforcing the brand. The month of publication is included in a different colour for emphasis and to stand out.

There are various pictures highlighting the main features in the magazine. The size of the picture represents the pecking order of the feature. The largest picture is associated with the main story. The page number is in a unique and eye-catching font. There are two pages of contents. Along the bottom of the pages is the mixmage website (www.mixmag.net) and the publication date. The content pages also summerise the free CD listing the tracks. The photographs are very distinctive and involve different poses. Some of the models are heavily made up. A smaller version of the front cover is listed on the top of left of the second page with credits of the people responsible for producing the publication. There is a sharp contrast between the background and the text. The features are listed with page number and a breif summary of the articles there is a reference to the section titled dont stay in which is an essential clubbing guide. This section was introduced in April 2009.

Finally towards the bottom of the second page of contents there is a heading for regular items.

The first page is situated on the right hand side of the double-sided page. It has a main picture to the left, on the picture is page numbers. This is very clever and effective because its simplistic and the reader automatically knows who is being talked about, however it is risky because its relying a lot of the reader to presume or know who that person is. The font of the page numbers is in a modern font, again targeting a younger audience. The women in the picture, Magda, is a young attractive women dressed in modern clothing to suit the wants of the reader.

The colours on the page are very contrasting and can be understood very easily. The font is basic but modern it is fairly bold.

The contents or the rest of the book is on the far right hand side of the page. this has a picture on the upper right of a well know band, underneath this is the features section.

The features section informs the reader of what the rest of the magazine is about. There is a list with each thing in bold then small font underneath explaining what they are.

The magazine comes with a free CD and this is shown at the bottom of the first contents page. It gives track listing and tells the reader a little about the CD.

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Contents page 2
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This page is brighter, and contains more images that the previous page. The font is still the same and the text on this page is informal, same as the previous page.
The listing of page numbers here are categoric. There are 4 main sections to which they are all separated into "V i p", "Tunes", Club country" and finally "regulars".

The background on this page is a plain white with a baby blue stripes heading diagonally, as the same as in the rest of the book.