Deciding What Content to Include on Front Page

Below are some brainstorms with ideas of what I want to include on my Front page.

Why to Include Items on Front Page

I have decided that along with the contemporary magazines I have researched, there are some elements that seem to be core and essential on a magazine front cover, such as; the bar code, date, price and issue number. These items are usually presented quite subtly and are not often the main attraction to the page, therefore on my final composition plan I have decided to put them almost hidden at the bottom of the page. Also that seems to be essential on all the front pages I have looked at is the title of the magazine and a centre picture about the cover story – mainly of gossip or an interview of pictured person. How the name of the magazine is formatted is totally unique from other magazines, for example Heat is a bubbly red title, whereas NME is a bold straight forward title. I have not gone into much depth in designing what I want the title to look like, as when I get onto Photoshop I will see which formatting, colours and style looks best and most appropriate. I have however played around with a few names, such as “Popworld” and “Music Overload”, I think that the best of them is “Music Mania” as it double emphasizes the letter “M” and will be remembered by audiences because of this repetition. I found that many of the celebrity magazines especially included statements or quick bulletins that “sum up” the magazine. So for example; “Every story! Every Secret! Every Week! Is what Inside Soap uses to simply describe what is in their magazine, and is used week after week as a slogan. I thought that my magazine should consist of one of these, so that audiences can instantly recognize what will be in the magazine, I have thought of a few different ones such as; “Music Information Overload—HERE & NOW” and “Exclusive Music Gossip”, however I feel that the best one is “This weeks hottest music news”. Mainly because I feel that it is quick to say, and says exactly what will be in the magazine – “hottest” gives a sexy, slick edge, whereas words such as “most recent news” is slight boring, I want the magazine to be “full on”. I am targeting an audience that is mainstream, both sexes, however I think that girls are more likely to be inclined to buy a magazine about music, and boys are more likely to buy a magazine about cars. The age range of my target audience is somewhere in-between 16-35. I have decided this because this age range will be “living it up” – many will not have children and therefore extreme responsibilities and will have the time to read music magazines. My only concern is that an older age target audience would have more disposable income, however as this coursework is not a business – I am not concerned by this issue.
I have not yet decided on colour schemes or font sizes etc specifically, but will come back to these issues once I have completed a final storyboard for each of the pages I am creating; a front cover, contents page and double page spread.

Why to include certain stories

I have decided to simply “use my imagination” to think of stories and content that would be in my music magazine to go on the front page and contents page. I need a variety of different stories, about different musicians – boy bands, girl bands, soloists etc – so that I appeal to a wide mainstream audience. There is a variety of features I intent to include, and just hope that they all fill the page, so it looks busy and inviting to a potential customer from my target audience. The pages I intend to be functional and include the basics; such as contents on a contents page, and the price, bar code and name of the magazine on the front cover.