The document summarizes a student's research plan to analyze existing music magazine covers and contents pages in order to learn conventions and improve their own music magazine cover design. The student will first examine five existing magazine covers, contents pages, and spreads to gain knowledge of typical magazine formatting and styles. This research will help the student incorporate common elements into their original magazine cover design.

1. Music Magazine Analysis
By Eleanor Birtles

2. The next step in my research is to first take
a look at five existing front covers and then
go onto look at five contents pages and five
double paged spreads from the same
existing music magazines. I can then go on
to improve my knowledge and from this I
can start to gather the typical forms and
conventions of a music magazine which I
can then incorporate into my own magazine
cover.

3. Magazine Cover One.
The logo of the magazine is
positioned in the same place every
time it reflects the identity of the
magazine and because it is always
the same the target
audience/market will then easily
be able to recognise the magazine
the blood red of the bold bubble
lettering always seems to stand
out on the front page.
The image is professionally taken
photograph. As there is more than
one person in the image there are
multiple gaze’s Matthew Murphy is
the lead singer of the band he is
therefore in the middle and he has a
direct stare out into the audience.
This perception gives him more
authority and more power than the
other two members. Although Dan is
positioned to the right of the image
he still has a direct stare at the
audience but it isn't as powerful as
Matthew because of where the
image is positioned and the there is
the gaze of Tord who is the
character on the left which is the
least formal but I still think it is
quite powerful because it makes the
reader wonder what it is that he is
staring at in the distance.
The strapline of the
magazine cover
contains more
information about in
this case Glastonbury.

The pug matches the colour scheme because it is the
same blue as the strips of information that are dotted
around the rest of the cover. The pug contains more
additional detail about what is contained in the
magazine this particular pug contains the information
that will tell the audience that in this magazine there
is a section dedicated to ‘BLUR’.
The textbox with the
barcode in it contains
some information such as
the price of the magazine
aswell as the magazines
website.