The genre I have chosen to do is R&B / Hip Hop so one of the magazines I have chosen is Mixmag.Mixmag is published in London and was launched in 1982. Mixmag is aimed at people who like dance or club music.
Conventions of page layout:
The masthead is in purple and it has the biggest font on the page. The masthead has to have the biggest font so it can be eye catching and notify the readers of what magazine they are reading. Unlike most magazines, the main focus, in this case is Loco Dice, is not covering the masthead which makes it look simplistic or it could show that the main focus isn't as important as the magazine name.
Skyline has been used to emphasize the point that Mixmag is "The world's biggest dance music & club culture magazine" - this has been written in capitals but the text size has not been enlarged. There is no pull quotes, captions or drop caps however gutter has been used to keep everything aligned and not look disorganized. A cover line has been used to show the relationship between the image and the text. "The return of Loco Dice" helps to notify the reader of who the person on the cover is if they didn't know and it acts like a caption and a teaser since "The return" sounds like he is going to make a comeback and intrigues the reader. Cover lines are snippets of text to interest the audience and this has been used 4 times on the right side and once on the left side. This notifies the reader what is going to be included in the magazine. The font remains constant throughout the cover. Main and important information is in bold for example "plus" - the boldness makes it eye-catching and drags the readers attention there. The font size also remains the same, for example the words that are underlined are the same size.
The cover is clearly structured and the mode seems upbeat since it is talking about music. The bar-code is situated in the bottom right corner next to the price in small print. The price is in small print so that the readers do not pay attention to it and just take it to the counter and buy it and be shocked about it at the counter. It has photography credits in the bottom left corner in small print since it isn't important information.
The magazine has also given out a free download card which includes the cover mix. Having free stuff in a magazine makes people want to buy it just to get a small product even if they don't read the magazine.
Image:
Loco Dice is a popular DJ who specializes in Hip Hop,the magazine frames him. Even though he is covering majority of his face with his hands, you can still see some parts of his face but he has posed in a way to create a shadow on his face which can show mystery and danger. Loco is wearing a simple white shirt which can imply purity and matches the simplicity in the title. It appears that he isn't wearing any make-up however styling products on his hair could be used to make it look "wind swept" or a fan could be used to make it look this way. Loco is wearing no jewelry apart from 2 rings. Again, this shows the simplicity in his clothing. There is a 3 colour scheme of purple, black and white.
Genre:
There are no stereotypes and nothing is portrayed badly on the cover page. You don't see any hint of culture on the cover which could mean that the magazine is neutral. By the way the magazine cover is designed and laid out; you can tell it is a Dance/Club music genre, Purple is a relaxed colour and shows that club/dance music has a calm atmosphere. The background colour is a very light blue and this goes well with the purple as it also makes the magazine look calm. Ibiza is a well known party island that most people go to when they want to go clubbing and since this is one of the cover lines, it shows that this is a feature of a magazine which represents the club/dance culture. Lastly, music artists like Skream, who is a music producer for electro music, and David Morale, who is a house music DJ and producer, are used on the cover to show complete the genre and since Dance music is the theme of the magazine; it links well with the artists that they have chosen.
Skyline has been used to emphasize the point that Mixmag is "The world's biggest dance music & club culture magazine" - this has been written in capitals but the text size has not been enlarged. There is no pull quotes, captions or drop caps however gutter has been used to keep everything aligned and not look disorganized. A cover line has been used to show the relationship between the image and the text. "The return of Loco Dice" helps to notify the reader of who the person on the cover is if they didn't know and it acts like a caption and a teaser since "The return" sounds like he is going to make a comeback and intrigues the reader. Cover lines are snippets of text to interest the audience and this has been used 4 times on the right side and once on the left side. This notifies the reader what is going to be included in the magazine. The font remains constant throughout the cover. Main and important information is in bold for example "plus" - the boldness makes it eye-catching and drags the readers attention there. The font size also remains the same, for example the words that are underlined are the same size.
The cover is clearly structured and the mode seems upbeat since it is talking about music. The bar-code is situated in the bottom right corner next to the price in small print. The price is in small print so that the readers do not pay attention to it and just take it to the counter and buy it and be shocked about it at the counter. It has photography credits in the bottom left corner in small print since it isn't important information.
The magazine has also given out a free download card which includes the cover mix. Having free stuff in a magazine makes people want to buy it just to get a small product even if they don't read the magazine.
Image:
Loco Dice is a popular DJ who specializes in Hip Hop,the magazine frames him. Even though he is covering majority of his face with his hands, you can still see some parts of his face but he has posed in a way to create a shadow on his face which can show mystery and danger. Loco is wearing a simple white shirt which can imply purity and matches the simplicity in the title. It appears that he isn't wearing any make-up however styling products on his hair could be used to make it look "wind swept" or a fan could be used to make it look this way. Loco is wearing no jewelry apart from 2 rings. Again, this shows the simplicity in his clothing. There is a 3 colour scheme of purple, black and white.
Genre:
There are no stereotypes and nothing is portrayed badly on the cover page. You don't see any hint of culture on the cover which could mean that the magazine is neutral. By the way the magazine cover is designed and laid out; you can tell it is a Dance/Club music genre, Purple is a relaxed colour and shows that club/dance music has a calm atmosphere. The background colour is a very light blue and this goes well with the purple as it also makes the magazine look calm. Ibiza is a well known party island that most people go to when they want to go clubbing and since this is one of the cover lines, it shows that this is a feature of a magazine which represents the club/dance culture. Lastly, music artists like Skream, who is a music producer for electro music, and David Morale, who is a house music DJ and producer, are used on the cover to show complete the genre and since Dance music is the theme of the magazine; it links well with the artists that they have chosen.
This is a detailed and well written case study Aa'ishah. Well done. You carefully consider the page layout conventions and analyse the image. Check the difference between "puff" and "coverline" as you have confused these two terms. For genre, you could more carefully consider the clues that are given about the genre of dance music, in terms of the image, words, design features and mise en scene. Vanessa
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DeleteVery good work on mixmag. Vanessa
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