Publishing Company Analysis

Bauer: The official website of this publishing company is http://www.bauer.co.uk/, however I found another website (http://www.bauermedia.co.uk/Brands), but on each website they both describe which magazines the publishing company own, however both website say they own different magazines making them unreliable and unable to see which is the real website. The first magazine publisher from the first link (which I will be talking about) produces magazines such as 'Take a Break', 'TV Choice' and 'Bella', those being highly popular in Britain for sources of gossip, real-life stories and TV listings. These types of magazines are very popular with women as they not only gives interesting stories about real life people and celebrities, but also tips of fashion and cooking. This makes it a mainstream as the target audience of the magazines they publish are for a broad audience of women instead of for just a specific group of women. If you look at the brand image of the publishing company then you will notice that it is very neutral and is not very eye catching. This is done specifically so that the magazine is able to associate itself with a much larger target audience if they were to go on and publish a men's magazine. The colour of the magazine's logo is blue, which can be associated with the style of a publishing company that would make men-specific magazines, however this is a contrast to the magazines they actually make as all of them are targeted at women. This can be told straight away by the individual magazine's use of colours in their logo by constantly using bright colours such as pink and red. The publishing company also have a radio sation according to their Wikipedia page, therefore showing the link between different types of media.

IPC Media: The official website for this publishing company is http://www.ipcmedia.com/, and is the only website, that I am aware of, that represents this publishing company. This magazine company publishes many magazines including 'Country Life', 'Cycling Weekly' and 'Look'. Straight away it can be told that the majority of the magazines that this company publish are niche magazines as they target a specific target audience such as people who enjoy the countryside, people who enjoy cycling or people who enjoy fashion. This creates many different target audiences for the many different niche magazines that they publish, generally targeting at a person's hobby or something they enjoy. The brand image is very plain and simple in terms of colours so reflect the generalisation of the different target audiences of the magazines they publish. One thing that is sort of symbolic to the different niche magazines that they produce, that is reflected in the logo, is the different use of font when writing 'IPC', as it symbolises one company having many different things within it including many different magazines targeted at different people. They specifically split their magazines into 4 categories, named Connect (for womens magazines), Inspire (leisure and specialist), SouthBank (women's lifestyle and home interests), and TX (which is portfolio of tv titles). Other types of media that they link with would be producing newspapers and also books wich I found from their Wikipedia page.

BBC Magazines: The official website for BBC's magazine publishing sector of their company is http://www.bbcmagazines.com/. The magazines that this huge company produces include 'Top Of The Pops', 'CBebbies Weekly' and 'Top Gear'. This can be shown straight away from the different genres of magazines I just named that this company is a mainstream company producing niche magazines to target specific audiences. They have many sections when publishing magazines by clearly having magazines that target children, pre-teens, teenagers, adults and educational magazines. This makes their target audience very simular to that of IPC Media as they target many different interests or hobbies that people may have. If you look at the brand image, it is used specifically as they are trying to assosiate the world-renoun company that is the BBC with the magazines, inticing people to buy them as they are assosiated with this famous company. This company shows a huge link between other types of media as BBC is a worldwide company that is known for its TV channel that is shown in many countries and is known as 'BBC Worldwide'. This makes their main channel of media through TV, with their production of magazines a secondary type of media to them. The have many other types of media including many radio stations, 7 in London to be specific, in which they are named BBC Radio 1 to 7. They also have radio sations for specific areas outside London so they are able to access them including Belfast, Bristol and Cardiff. Other types of media they have is their online website that caters to their large target audience as they have specific website for adults and children by having games, etc. The different types of media they represent is endless, including their own Orchestra.

Development Hell: The official website for this publishing comany is http://developmenthell.co.uk/. This company produces only two montly magazines (which is said on the home page of website), named 'The Word' and 'Mixmag'. These magazines both target a specific genre as they are both music magazines. This makes the magazines relatively niche as they are only specific to music loves, however Mixmag may target a specific type of music as they look only at dance and clubbing music where as 'The Word' is not as specific as 'Mixmag' because it features a more broader range of music genres but still may favour a specific genre such as rock music. This ultimately pigeon-holes their target audience into people that enjoy specific types fo music. If you look at the brand image, it is used specifically to assosiate with the message they are trying to get across. This is by making it red to stand out, and also to represent fire and anger which goes with the name of the independant company as it has to word 'Hell' in it to represent the young and vibrant audience that this company targets, with the magazine 'The Word' evidence of this as it is a magazine targeted at dance and clubbing music which is known for being vibrant and unruly, reflecting its target audience. This company also links with another type of media which is through the internet. They created a very popular website called 'Don't Stay In' which they desrible as "The worlds biggest clubbing social network". This goes hand-in-hand with their magazines audience as it is a music-based website that urges you to go clubbing, reflecting the target audience of their magazine 'The Word'. Ultimately, this companies purpose is towards young people who enjoy dance and clubbing music, with their magazine 'Mixmag' as a more broad-ranged magazine not just targetting at dance music which can be told as its name entails giving a mix of different genres.

By Harry Luke Mulvany

Contents Page Analysis 2

 

This contents page from Kerrang's January 2010 issue uses a number of images which have been constructed especially to indicate what stories are going to be featured inside the magazine and what they are going to be about. They have been constructed especially by making the reader see these certain images and want to know the full story behind it, therefore having to go out and buy it. This contents page mainly supports my initial findings of what Kerrang magazine is about and what their target audience wants, but there also some things that oppose the hard-rock readership of Kerrang which I discovered from research into the magazine. The things that support my research into Kerrang is the type of bands that are featured in the contents page, them all being very rock-orientated artists which can be told from what is shown in the images.

An example of this is that almost all images feature a person with some sort of instrument like the guitar, or are acting wildly which many rock singers/bands are known for doing. The thing that surprised me and also opposes my initial findings of the magazine is the fact that the Editor of the magazine is a woman, furthermore who gives off no signs from the image that she enjoys any of the rock music that is featured in the magazine. This opposes my initial findings as Kerrang is seen as more of a male-orientated magazine as most bands and artists featured in it are male, and the wildness and out-there behaviour that rock bands portray are stereotypically very male and masculine due to the violence and aggression of it. On this contents page, there are 9 images including the 3 images of previous covers in the corner.

There are 3 main colours that are used in this contents page, which are Black, White and Yellow. Rock magazines such as Kerrang like to use dark colours such as black to associate with the dark and rebellious image that comes with the rock genre. As you can see by the front cover above, this colour scheme is similar to the contents page but doesn't clearly support the same use of style. This can be told as on the front cover there is a huge use of the colour blue by having the background of the main image blue and also some text, where as in the contents page there is next-to-no use of the colour blue. This shows that there isn't really a development of a house style as it would be difficult to tell that these two pages are from the same magazine excluding the title block and other little things such as the use of yellow as the anchorage text. 

The font used in this magazine is sans-serif, which makes it much more informal yet gives less impact than serif, which opposes their readership as rock music is seen as being in-your-face and very aggressive in contrast the the use of font. This use of font shows another contrast in the style of both the front cover and the contents page as serif font and other types of fonts are used mainly on the front cover in order to show impact and appeal to the rock music fans where as when you open the magazine it uses a softer san-serif font, with the magazine almost selling a false image that the magazine will be more hard hitting and serious than it actually is. This again shows a small amount of development in a house style of the magazine's layout as the use of fonts on both pages are completely different, making it harder to identify the layout of the front cover from the contents page.

The information on the contents page is organised very well so it is easily accessible to the audience and pages can be easily navigated to. You can see this as all the information that the audience needs to know and how to get to the page is at the bottom half of the page and has clear titles for all the different types of things that are included in the magazine and how to get there which are split into different sections. The different sections that the information is categorised into are Feedback, News, Swag, Live Reviews, Features, Album Reviews, Gig Guide & K Quiz!, making it easy to choose which part of the magazine you would most like to read. In order to make the contents page eye catching and annunciate which articles are important, etc, they include little images next to the features reading 'Cover Story' to appeal to the target audience as they chose to open the magazine due to what was on the cover, making it clear that that is where the stories are that they heard a snippet of on the cover.  This tells us that the magazine is very clearly organised in a detailed fashion which is ultimately beneficial to the reader as they can find the story they want very quickly.

There are hardly any obvious promotional features on this contents page except for one, which would be the promotion of the magazine itself in the bottom-right corner assisting people to subscribe to Kerrang magazine and have it delivered to their house for a cheap price. This promotion is completely beneficial to the magazine and itself only as they are using their own page space to promote their own magazine, so only they benefit from it. This is the only obvious promotional feature that the contents page has, however there is one big and less obvious promotion that the magazine offers and that of which any music magazine offers, which is the promotion of the artist or band. This magazine does well in promoting artists and bands by talking about them and mentioning the music they produce, which is beneficial to them as well as the magazine as it makes people aware of them therefore more people will go out and buy there music and they will make more money. Kerrang benefits from this promotion as people want to know about these bands or artists, so by mentioning them they are giving the target audience what they want leading them to buy the magazine. They also promote some bands or artists more than others depending on popularity, etc, by having them as one of their features which are one of the most important parts of the magazine. 

The magazine's logo is placed only once on the contents page, and this is in the centre which would be the first thing you see when you see the page. This also represents how the name is the centre of the whole magazine and it is where the whole magazine started and what it represents. The logo is quite dominant as it is rather large and is a different colour from the text next to it however the text next to it is yellow where as the actually logo itself is just plain white, which really makes the less important text beside it more eye-catching and dominant then the logo itself. Despite this however, the logo is still very large and dominant in the centre of the page and is very iconic. The Kerrang franchise spreads to many areas, including a TV channel, Radio station, website and its very own award ceremony. It is also published in Spain and there is also an Australian version, with none of these other franchises promoted on the contents page of the magazine except for the magazine itself.

By Harry Luke Mulvany

Contents Page Analysis

  

This magazine uses lots of images as you can see from the above images of the magazine's contents pages. These images have been constructed by giving a reader a taster of what is inside the magazine. This is by showing lots of different images that are featured in the magazine's various articles, to try and wider their target audience and show them that there may be something inside their magazine for other genres and not just what the stereotypical readership of the magazine is. They both support and oppose my initial findings about the magazine's style and its intended audience for two reasons. The first reason that it supports my initial findings is because it mentions people such as John Lennon and Liam Gallagher whose musical genre are more suited this specific rock-related magazine. The reason that it also opposes my initial findings is that it also mentions artists like Cheryl Cole and 50 Cent, which are both not in the genre you would expect from this magazine as it is more associated with rock music. In the two above images of the magazine's contents pages, there are 10 images.

The main colour that is used in the contents page would definitely be red. This also supports the colour of the front cover (as can be seen at the very top of the analysis) as red is used frequently on there too, including the magazine's logo and the majority of the text. The main font that is used in the contents page would be serif. This does not support the style of the front cover unlike the use of colours, as the font that is used on the front cover is different from the contents page. As can be told by the images above, a house style is developing in this magazine as the structure of the magazines style can be seen through the front cover and the contents page as they are both very similar in terms of structure.

The information about what is inside the magazine is organised very neatly in order for it to be accessible to the audience. This is by, as can be seen from both of the images of the magazine's contents pages, having the information about what is featured in the magazine to the side of the page along with the page number so the reader is able to go straight to the article they would like to read and allowing the images to take precedence as they are much more significant as they are the first things that are seen and appeal to the audience. This is done purposely as the magazine appeals to a wide audience by having artists from a range of genres featured in the magazine so by having the information set out so it can be chosen which page to go to, including the artist from which the genre you're most interested in. The contents page is cut in to different sections. This is by having the first page of the contents including only the 'featured' articles which are brought to the readers attention first by having them on the first contents page, followed by the 'regular' articles which are shown on the second contents page.

Promotional features are things that are included in magazines in order to promote businesses as the reader sees the adverts for the business making them aware of the business and the product they may be selling, etc. allowing the reader to go out and buy this product. Magazines receive money for this promotion as they are taking up space in their magazine to allow customers to become aware of products, making the reader more inclined to buy it thanks to the magazine therefore the business is earning more money due to this promotion. The contents pages of this magazine, that I can notice, doesn’t feature any clear promotion of any kind (i.e. advert of a product). The only inkling of promotion that can be taken from this magazine's contents page would be the actual promotion of the artists featured in the magazine. By having the artists mentioned in this magazine, they are making readers aware of this artist and the music they have produced, etc. allowing readers that were unaware of this artist before aware of them now and maybe go and buy the artists single therefore promoting the artist (i.e. Cheryl Cole's single '3 Words').

The magazine's logo of 'Q' is featured on both contents pages. The dominance of the logos are rather small on both pages but due to the amount of logos featured on each page, it makes it very recognizable and associated with the magazine. On the first page, the logo is featured in the top left of the page in the same structure as it is on the front cover. It is featured in the bottom left of the page and extremely small, beside the page number. On the second contents page it is featured in the top right corner as part of the image of the magazine's front cover featuring Cheryl Cole, and again in the bottom right and extremely small similar to the page before beside the page number. The 'Q' brand has a number of franchises, including a radio station and a television show. The radio station is an online and DTV radio station and was created in 2008 with Coldplay there helping to launch it. The TV show was created in 2000 and is only available with companies such as Sky and Virgin. Both the radio station and the TV show are not mentioned or promoted in the contents page.

By Harry Luke Mulvany

Magazine Article Analysis 2

Article Analysis 2

      

        

The choice of artist in this article is Cheryl Cole. Cheryl Cole is best known for being a part of the group Girl's Aloud, but recently as she has become a worldwide success from the hit talent show X Factor where she features as one of the judges, she has decided to go solo for the time being and created her own album. This suggest that the target audience is extremely vast due to Cheryl Cole's appeal to many areas of British culture. It ranges from girls that want to be her, to men that want to have her, which opens the target audience range of this particular magazine wide open when normally 'Q' focuses on more rock-related artists. 

The type of language that is used in this article is very informal. This straight away appeals to the target audience of the magazine as the majority of Cheryl's fans are working class as she had come from a working class background herself, which means that they are likely to be less educated. This reflects in the type of language as it is less formal and more easy to understand for somebody that is not so educated. An example of this would be the opening sentence of the article which reads, "Cheryl Cole is sick to death of looking at herself. it's Wednesday afternoon, and she is sat in a make-up chair wearing a pink leopard print dressing gown and Ugg boots, having extensions woven into her hair..." This image of Cheryl makes her seem like a normal girl with normal problems and wears very normal clothes, which can be related to the working class reader therefore making them feel as if they are similar to this world-renown popstar.

The tone that the magazine has to address the reader is as an extremely informed and intelligent fan. This can be told by the way the magazine is constantly tell the reader interesting and supportive facts about Cheryl which makes it seem as if it is an informed fan talking. An example of this is, "At one point she has the UK's Number 1 single, album and TV show. She is the only person who has topped FHM magazine's Worlds Sexiest Women poll and a list of Britain's "most requested teeth" from cosmetic dentists." This shows how the magazine sounds like an informed fan as they are constantly giving the reader positive facts about Cheryl to make them like her even more. 

The style of text that is used for the majority, if not all, of the article would be a Serif font. This use of font is very easy to look at and read, making the words seem soothing and smooth. This makes the reader feel easy and comfortable when reading the magazine. This tells us about the image of the magazine and its audience as we know it is a magazine that likes to make their readers feel very comfortable when reading, and the audience enjoy reading this specific style of text so are not into music such as hard-rock and heavy metal despite what the magazine 'Q' may make a reader think. The textual interview is arranged by starting off telling the audience where the interview is being set (i.e. in a dressing room while she is having her make-up done). Then it goes on into extreme detail of Cheryl's highlights and downfalls since she rose to fame, while having quote from her inbetween this.

The pages are arranged very similarly in this article as in each page there is only one  but very large image followed by lots of text beside that image. This means that only just over half of the pages are taken up by text. However in one of the article pages as can be seen above, one of the pages is taken up more by an image rather than text where as the others show the majority of text, not to mention the page in between which is taken up fully by an image. This reflects the target audience as the amount of text to image of each page is very similar, with the amount of text for most pages only just taking the edge. Also there is a page in which there is only image and no text, and also one in which the image is larger than the amount of text. Therefore telling us about the audience that they prefer to see large images than just text alone, reflecting Cheryl's working class audience as they are less educated so prefer less text. 

Cheryl Cole is presented to the audience through these images as almost a superhero. This can be told as all of the images are taken in the rain, and Cheryl is standing there with her back straight and dressed all in black with buildings in the background like she is a hero. This reflects the target audience as she is being presented as a superhero, yet her working class fans know she is very normal just like them and does normal things and is a normal girl which makes them feel like if she is normal yet can be a superhero, so can they. It makes them feel like Cheryl may be a normal girl, or portrayed as such, but can do great things like be a superhero standing in the rain and protecting the city in the background, then they can too, giving them hope that they can be like her. One of the images anchors read, "'Wa-hey, I shoulda brought me brolly pet', etc, etc..." This shows a contrast between the sophistication and seduction of a superhero standing tall in the rain to a normal girl from Newcastle, making the audience believe further that if a normal girl like Cheryl can make it big, they can to. 

This article hardly requires any prior knowledge. The only prior knowledge that you require for this specific article would be whether you knew who Cheryl Cole was or not, which is pretty unlikely as she is one of the, if not thee most famous people in Britain right now and featured in Britain's newspapers on a daily basis. The reason that no prior knowledge, other than whether you know who Cheryl Cole is or not, is required because the article gives lots of information and facts about Cheryl and what her life has been like for the past year or so both positive and negative. Therefore if you know of Cheryl Cole but are unaware of her life from when she started to really appear in the public eye then this magazine is so detailed that it provides all of this information for you including more that is maybe less newsworthy but none the less still interesting. This shows that all you need to know is who Cheryl is in order to understand this article making it appeal to a wider audience and allowing them to put the article down knowing who Cheryl is and what her life has been like since she rose to fame. 

By Harry Luke Mulvany