To attract their target audience, the author researched popular rock magazines to understand common design conventions like colors, masthead styles, and fonts. They found that many magazines consistently use the same color scheme and masthead positioning in each issue. However, some magazines like Kerrang vary the colors and positioning to suit each article. Based on this research, the author used darker colors for the cover image but brighter colors for the text and masthead to make the magazine stand out. They also themed the magazine by making the masthead and main cover line red.

1. How did you attract/address your
audience?
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2. Initial Research
To find out what would attract my audience, I did
research into magazines and then went deeper to
research rock magazines. This gave me a better idea of
the colours and techniques to use in my own magazine
conventions.

3. Masthead
My masthead is part of my brand identity and can give first
impressions of a magazine to a shop customer. Therefore it is vital
that it is themed correctly and actually looks attractive. When
choosing the colour I looked at a few other rock magazines to see
what they decided would fit their audience. I found out that many
magazines such as Q keep the same colour scheme and
positioning in every issue.

4. Further Masthead
On the flip side a few magazines, including Kerrang, change the
colours used in most issues and often reposition the masthead to
what suits each article. From my research I learnt that my
audience tend to like darker themed images so as you can see on
the front cover, I edited a photo to make it more appealing to my
audience. To oppose this I used brighter colours on my text and
masthead to make the magazine stand out. I tried to theme my
magazine by making the masthead and main cover line both red.

5. Text and Fonts
Throughout my magazine I tried to include words that would be
associated with this genre and based all the articles on rock
related news or interviews. I noticed other rock magazines often
use big and bold fonts so I did the same on my coverlines and
headings. Most magazines, music or not, just use simple plain
fonts for the actual article paragraphs so I decided to keep to the
conventions and do the same.