Music magazine stand

Magazine magazine stand

I went to WHSmith to take a photograph of a magazine stand, I visited other stores, such as Tesco and ASDA but they didn't have any music magazine. I chose WHSmith as they had a variety of music magazines which are main stream and niche.

I went to WHSmith to take a photograph of a magazine stand. This is the magazine stand I took in WHSmith as you can see they are all music magazines. However, I noticed that the only genre of music in this magazine stand are all rock or alternative rock, there is no other genres to be seen within the image. The organisation of the magazines have been aligned all facing towards the audience showing the front cover, every front cover can be seen as the masthead, is shown on all the magazine which makes it readable, also the colours of the mast head are very vibrant as well as dark which contrasts and makes it easier to spot while looking at the magazine front covers in the stand. The magazine covers are organised to overlap other magazines which shows the magazine but covers a small portion of the magazine, it is all visible.

In this stand, the duplicate of magazines are behind each other, for example in this image, there are 3 issues of the Kerrang magazine, and the duplicates are in the background of the first magazine, this shows the audience that there are more magazines of the same kind available. In a majority of the magazine front covers, the rock genre is more dominated by the male gender in comparison to the female gender, as there is only 1 woman on a front cover in the magazine stand and all the other rock or alternative rock genre magazine have only males on the front cover.

There is a lot of bold cover lines and strap lines, on the magazines on the magazine stand, this makes it easier for the target audience to read, as they'll get a hint of what could be discovered within the magazine. There are also strap lines, which tell the audience that there is a lot of freebies in the magazine for instance the MOJO magazine in the image, has a strap line which says "Free Cd" this automatically engages the audiences eye, which directly shows that there is a free cd in the magazine.

The magazine layout and organisation have been laid out to show the cover star, as cover stars are the main focal points on a magazine front cover, which also gives an idea of what   
the genre of magazine would be about, some magazine also display other artists and bands on the front cover in a smaller segment on the page, to reach out to their audience by interest which entices the audience in to wanting to know what could be inside the magazine. By also having a visible layout, the audience can detect the house style of magazines, as some magazines always use the same house style which makes it easy to spot, for instance Kerrang. Kerrang always has an house style of black, red and yellow if the target audience were to see the magazine from a distance they would easily spot it, and recognise the magazine.