Magazine Research

I have been researching into the British magazine industry. I chose to look at the well-known music magazine NME.

General

The company that produce the magazine is IPC Ignite. It costs £2.30 and is published weekly. The average yearly circulation from the past 11 years is 65000.

The Cover

The title of the magazine is NME. I have investigated that this means New Musical Express. This connotes the fact that it is a music magazine and it uses letters so that it catches the reader’s attention more than if it was all written out. It is very easy to recognise as it is simple and you would be able to remember it. It is red, bold and has a white border. This border contrasts with the black background of the magazine. The logo of the magazine is the title NME. This has been produced for both purposes so that it can be used as the title and logo on every cover of NME’s magazines and even on their website. There is no strap line for the magazine. There is only one image on this magazine cover. This is the main image as this is what attracts you to want to read inside. It gives an idea of an article that is going to be inside the magazine. The picture involves four men, so we can assume that these are members of a band. They are all directly gazing at the camera so it is as if they are looking at the person reading the magazine. They all have serious facial expressions however it looks quite staged and very set up. This could appear more natural as it should look how they really are. The clothes that they are wearing is fairly casual, I think this is to not make that the first thing the reader looks at. There is only one image on the front cover. This ensures that the reader focuses on the main image, the "Artic Monkeys". This is good as it is the main story of this week’s edition. If there were other images it may make the reader want to focus on them stories rather than the main article. The content on the front of the cover focuses on articles that are inside the magazine. It promotes the bands Artic Monkeys, Amorphous Androgynous, dead weather, green day, Surfer Blood, Dum Dum Girls, Fool’s Gold, Baby Monster, Islet, the solo artist Dizzee Rascal and Julian Casablanca’s Christmas singles. All of these bands have articles inside the magazine. The typefaces on the cover are a mixture of serif and sans serif. All of the writing fits well with the house style. The cover uses bright orange to catch the reader’s attention and draws you to the main articles. It makes it exciting and more interesting to look at. The aim of using these bright colours would be to make this magazine look better than others. The cover talks to the reader by using a language that makes you want too read the articles. A cover line that is used is “15 new bands to get excited about”. Because they are new it sounds interesting and exciting and that is what attracts you to find the article within the magazine. It also uses “Artic Monkeys” in large, bright orange letters so that it stands out and because they are well known it is interesting. The magazine has some distinctive features to its format, as it is not A4 size. It is wider and also longer than a regular magazine size. It has all the same features as other magazines, for example, the position and style of the logo/title. The magazines unique selling point would be the bright colours that have been used for the font as this draws your attention and it stands out over different magazines.

Inside

The magazine has in total 68 Pages. There are many adverts included in this magazine. Altogether, throughout there are 23 pages of adverts. Some topics that are advertised are food, drink, music, technology, clothes, and gigs. There are 9 double page spreads in the magazine. These are for NME Radio, letters, the ten most talked about bands, the band Amorphous Androgynos, the band The Drums, Underage, Album’s, and Swn Festival. There are two double page spreads for the ten most talked about bands. There is one advertorial. When I first glanced at page 34 I did not link it to the article on the next page. I thought that it was some sort of advertisement. The style of writing makes this feel like an advert as it is big and bold. The magazine achieves its unified house style by the font used throughout. It uses many different sizes of font however the style is the same. The main colours used throughout are black and red. The logo on the front cover is red.

Publishers

Bauer - Bauer Media has the most influential female-focussed media brands in the UK including heat, Closer, Pop, Magic 105.4

Across our women’s portfolio we engage 9.3 million females at any given time every week - a massive 37% of all UK women. Across the female 15-34 demographic we touch nearly 60% of the UK population and over two thirds of females 15-24 accounting for 2.5 million.