CONVENTIONS ANALYSIS

- Lewis Spencer

FRONT COVER: SLIDES 3-12

MASTHEADThe masthead can be recognised as the title of a magazine front cover, it’s located at the top of the editorial page and presented in bold font formats with prominent colour schemes in order to catch the audience’s eye. The masthead is essentially the name of the particular brand of magazines for example NME, Billboard and Sound on Sound are highly popular brands which offer specific content referring to genre and artist types which are currently viewed worldwide for their exclusive content on live events and news of particular artists.

PlugA plug is the promotional material which is typically apparent on the upper right hand side of the front page. It refers to content which is available on the inside of the magazine and is usually presented in rather vibrant colours with a variation of tents and colour schemes on the inside in order to interest the consumer.

The plug highlighted above on the NME magazine offers a contrasted colour from the background in order to bring the viewer’s attention to this specific area of the page. The golden colour connotes a sense of positivity and richness of this promotional content, the black text is indicated clearly from the bold capital text used in addition to the attractive orange text below which gives information on the Arctic Monkeys, which fans will be interested into looking into when purchasing this magazine.

Pull Quotations

Pull quotes are snippets referring to stories or speeches of particular artists which is conventionally located around the main image. They’re most often presented in the very opposite colour to the background, in the NME magazine section to the right this can be demonstrated as its attraction is broadened considering its size is usually a lot smaller to the rest of the texts on the front cover.

MAIN

IMAGE

This conventional material is usually visualised as a medium close up on specific artist(s) in order to indicate mode of address clearly to the target audience. The main image takes up a large proportion of the cover in order to ideally set as the primary focus for viewers, specific images will be used for specific branding styles.

Barcode Issue Number

Website ReferenceThese are simple

requirements for magazines and are used in order to provide a scanning code for purchases of products. Barcodes are usually rather small and located within the footer area, commonly situated on the left or right side.

The issue number is a specific number of the particular magazine of its series. It’s usually located in the footer area and appears rather small in order to fit next to or within the barcode section. This is a purposeful method done in order to provide more space for variations of texts and pull quotations around the bottom of the magazine front cover.

Website references are generally located near or in the footer of a magazine front cover; they’re used for the purpose of referring the viewer to further information of the content in the magazine via a particular website.

Hous

e

Style A house style is a

colour scheme format consisting of three which are implemented within the variations of texts, images and background. these colours are usually used in a connotation like format in order to represent the magazine front cover in a particular style which meets the interests for specific target audiences.

Main Feature Story

The main feature story of the front cover of a music magazine is recent events from particular music artist’s performances or news in relation to them which is broadcasted on a large scale of popular importance. The main feature story is conventionally the largest text on the front cover in addition to it being located usually near the bottom or top central, left or right. The colour scheme of the main feature story is most often the juxtaposition to the background in order for it to stand out clearly. Pull quotations can also be part of the implementation of the main feature story.

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Skyline

Footer

The header is essentially the header text of the front page, various important information can be identified here such as the price, extra promotional material other than the plug i.e. music advertisements and the issue number. Though the prominence of the header may not be as much as the other texts on the front cover from its small size, the colour scheme of the other texts will also be used here for it to be easily noticeable for those who are to scan the front page as an entirety.

A footer is located within the horizontal lining of the bottom of the magazine cover, small texts are placed here in terms of numbering formats such as the barcode, issue number and page referencing details. The text in the footer is usually the smallest so that the other texts scattered around the main image are the most attractive to the viewer.

Images

Seco

ndar

yThis particular mode; of the Arctic Monkeys NME magazine didn’t include secondary images on the front page when studying it, however after researching into more NME front covers I had identified that the vast majority do not offer secondary images as there are only a very few that do. It isn’t a conventional aspect of a typical NME magazine, however an example of one that does is the image to the left.

CONTENTS PAGE: SLIDES 13-20

TITLE• A title of a contents page is placed at the

top of the page in order to signify that it’s representing the information below. The font and sized appear prominent through their boldness in order to form an eye-catching appearance for the audience. The colour of the font is often the juxtaposition to its background in order to fully ‘stand out’.

MAIN IMAGE AND STORY

The main image of the contents page appears in an enlarged format which is larger than the rest of the other images on the same page to intrigue the reader to this specific section which conjoins with the main story. The main story most commonly starts with a pull quote, very similar to a double page spread as seen in the NME issue’s image to the right, but can also start as a headline. Following on from this will be a snippet which gives an overall message of what can be read within the specific page. This page number is also attached to the main image and story in a thickened font which offers a different colour scheme to the back and foreground so the audiences interest is also drawn here.

TITLE AND WEBSITE REFERENCE

The title of the contents page is conventionally formatted in a bold, clear text for it to be easily recognisable of standing as the basis of the page’s information layout. This can usually be found at the top middle of the page as it stands out above all other texts on the same page as it is much more enlarged.

Similarly to the front cover, a website reference is also used on the contents page in order to refer to additional information based on various other pages within the magazine.

PAGE NUMBER• A page number are used on each and

every page to locate and relocate via the contents section as seen in the upper right image of the NME magazine. This is used as a reference process.

• The previous editions section on the contents page is used in order to advertise the brand’s magazines of which came before the current, this is very important for the industry to successfully profit in its grossing through marketing.

Previous Editions

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LETTER FROM

THE EDITOR

• The NME magazine of which I studied didn’t include a letter from the editor in the content page. This could be due to the fact that its not conventional for a typical NME product to be included. However if the letter from the editor was included it would appear as the image to the right. The letter from the editor is purposeful in terms of promoting the ideology of the magazine in an informal tone, it includes their own signature too in order to authenticate. There’s usually a bold heading followed by smaller text so that the attraction is instantaneous and the content can be followed on from this.

SUBHEADINGS

• Subheadings are a prime convention of a contents page in order to give the reader an overview or title of what the content below will entail. The location often appears above variations of texts which are spread throughout the page, as demonstrated in this 2015 NME issue image to the right hand side.

SECONDARY IMAGES

• Just like the front cover of a music magazine, the contents page also contains secondary images in addition to texts below which are additional content for readers to follow up on as well as the main feature story/article. They often appear rather bold in size but smaller than the main image, this is demonstrated within the NME 2015 issue to the left.

SLIDES 21- DOUBLE PAGE SPREAD

TITLE• The title of a double page spread is used

very similarly to titles of contents pages and main covers, it essentially outlines the article below in a format which is eye-catching. Conventionally lyrics of the focus artist can be implemented stylistically in order to draw eyes to this specific text across both pages. This can be identified in my magazine example to the right with Arctic Monkey’s referenced lyrics “R U Mine”. Its presentation is broadened by a thick often capitalised text.

Drop CapThe drop cap of a magazine or newspaper article is the enlarged letter within the start of a paragraph, the rest of the text is formatted into a smaller size in order to highlight the prominence of the drop cap. This is a prime convention of a media format in order to attract the audience’s attention from interesting content which follows on from this.

Magazine referenced example:

MAIN IMAGE• A main image of a double page spread is very

unique in terms of style as it is very different to a typical main image of a front cover and contents page. The physical size of this image usually would take up the entirety of one or one and a quarter pages of which text sometimes overlaps. The main image will refer to the same artist as presented on the front cover and will be presented in usually vibrant colours in order to appear attractive in being the very first aspect of the pages that the reader’s interest lies.

STAND FIRST

• The stand first of a double page spread is essentially a summary texts which encourages the viewer to proceed reading on to more texts. This chosen issue didn't contain a stand first above the text across the double page spread, though this is usually a conventional feature from NME magazines. This could represent that this particular magazine doesn’t follow these usual expectations.

MAIN ARTICLE• A main article is based from the main

subject of the magazine, within music magazines a specific artist will be presented on the front page linking to the feature story, and then is followed on in the double page spread as they are the main focus. Various quotations from the artist will be referenced in order to engage the audience with specific events.