Iconography refers to the use of images and symbols to represent ideas. Rock/pop rock music genres typically use certain iconography in their magazines and album covers. This includes costumes consisting of dark colors, music instruments as props, large central images on magazine covers surrounded by bold text, and plain backgrounds so the focus is on the artist. The layout inside magazines features a large image on one page with partial text overlay and mostly text on the facing page with smaller images to avoid walls of text. The design aims to attract male readers through masculine styles and focuses on interviews and reviews of bands/artists.

1. What Is meant by the term iconography?
Iconography is the use of images and symbols to represent ideas. This can consist of costumes,
music artists, make up, props, setting, layouts, typography, colours and contempary fashion.
What iconography does your music genre use?
My music genre is rock/ pop rock. Costumes aren’t used in my genre as a majority of artists wear
normal clothing, they normally consist of dark colours. This could be because rock music can be
quite dark and their clothing reflects on that, but it’s the artists own preference. Props are used in
front covers but they are usually replaced with music instruments. The layout to rock magazines
are very similar, the always have a large image in the background and the main cover line and
there is only the main image on the cover surrounded by text. The main cover line is normally
sprawled across the main image in a different font to the other writing on the page, this is so the
buyer is drawn to the cover line as the cover line normally the main thing in the magazine. The
background is normally plain this is so the main focus is on band/artist on the cover, also if there
was a design on the background it may clash with the text on the cover making it hard to read.
The type of text is normally bold and boxy, this gives the magazine a masculine vibe like many of
the bands/artists featured in the magazine; this means the magazine may attract a more male
than female audience. Inside the magazine for example, the layout of a double page spread
would consist of a very large image covering most of one of the pages of the bands/artist and text
covering part of the images, if it was of a person the face and top half of the body would have no
text covering it. The other page would have mostly text and smaller images, this is so the reader
doesn’t have a whole page of text to read as normally when the reader looks at a page before
reading it having a lot of text wouldn’t appeal to them and the reader would skip the page. Make
up isn’t a big deal for rock magazines as many of the bands/artists are male, however stage
makeup is part of some bands brand identity and wear it for magazine covers to show this. Music
artists are always used in rock magazines as they are why the magazine is made. This is shown
by having interviews, band/artist specials and album reviews, these features make the basis of
the magazine and are the main reason people buy them.
What iconography would you like to use within your own magazine design?
I would use the same layout as a rock magazine as it clearly shows images and the separate
topics, setting because they use plain backgrounds for images and it doesn’t distract the reader
from the images or text. I will also use music artists as it is what the magazine is about and
ICONOGRAPHY