Codes and conventions

Codes and Conventions

The masthead of a music magazine - or any magazine for that matter, gives the particular magazine an easily recognisable identity whilst attracting the targeted demographic of readers. It is significant as it is an immediate definition of whatever mood each issue aims to convey. For example, NME uses an extremely bold title in red which is almost iconic looking, it is conventional for music magazines to use eye-catching fonts and colours in order to gain interest. Cover lines are also a convention of magazines, they tend to be short sentences on a front cover depicting what articles the issue includes. In an early 2013 NME (featuring Hurts on the cover) one of the cover lines state "The first great record of 2013?", I find this especially effective  because it's setting up possible music trends for the year. It is also posed as a rhetoric question and this results in the reader almost wanting to challenge such a bold statement: either way it is very compelling.

A successful magazine should contain a lot of varied images throughout, generally colourful photos relating to whatever article are used to keep the reader interested visually as well as on the actual content. This is important within the contents pages as the images are advertising each section in a way, generally even with a multitude of images the contents pages should be organised so that it is a simple process to find whereabouts each topic is located. You often see page numbers placed on top of images in photoshop which helps the reader even further. Basically we are given the impression that the magazine company want to make it as easy as possible to read through in an ordered manner, it is clear that we are encouraged. Due to the recent increase in technology the magazines have to acknowledge a range of different social networking platforms e.g. Twitter, Facebook so that younger audiences can become more involved and interactive with the concept. Information about the web address and other websites can easily be seen on the cover, contents page and throughout the rest of the magazine.