2nd March: Fonts and colour schemes

I thought of some potential names for my music magazine and then after I asked a 20 people who were in my target audience and tallied up which name received the most votes:

• Indie-go - 0
• Muse - 1
• W - world wide music -6
• Beat - 3
• X - marks the spot for good music - 9
• Tune - 1

I’ve decided that I only want one font type throughout my magazine as I thought it will be more effective. Other magazines I have looked at, such as NME and Kerrang all use either one or two font types and colours. When choosing the font, I tested out many types and narrowed it down to five main ones to pick from.  I asked people for their opinion on which fonts they thought would look more appropriate for a music magazine and it was between 'Chiller' and 'Copper black. Personally, I thought ‘Arial black’ was too plain and not very adventurous; the ‘chiller’ was not very suitable for music magazines as it appears quite scary and childish; I also thought the ‘elephant’  and ‘gil sans’ font was more suited to a fashion magazine. Therefore, I decided to go with copper black as the font came out bold and easy to read, it also suited my music magazine. I will also use bold, italics and underlines when necessary as for some information will need to stand out more than others showing its importance. And most magazines use a variety of text sizes, for example the main article will be the biggest bit of text; whereas writing in a flash will not be as important and thus a lower font size.

Colour schemes

It is important to stick to the same colour scheme throughout the magazine as it can look odd using bright colours on the inside with a dull colour on the front. The colours also need to reflect the type of magazine, for example, Kerrang uses bold and bright colours such but a dark (usually black) colour background... Red, Dark Blue, Grey and White are likey colours to see in magazines such as NME as it suits the target audiences. Another example would be teen magazines such as Top of the pops who use bright fun colours such as pinks, purples and yellow. This is because the target audience is much younger and I think if they used dark colours this will not attract teenagers or younger children. So for my music magazine, as it will be aimed at 18-25 year olds, will use a similar colour scheme to NME and Q - Reds, Greys and Black. This is basic but I think it will look effective on a plain background.

After researching into other magazine logos, to help me chose mine. They all similarly used a bold colour contrasted with the background or vice versa. For example, NME uses a red font making the lettering extremely noticeable against a white background and Q does the opposite using a white letter against a red background. I have chosen to name my magazine X as the one letter phrasing like Q makes the magazine more effective as it becomes more recognisable. I have also chosen the letter X as a play-on-words as my slogan for the magazine will be ‘X marks the spot for good music’ which is usually found on board games and so on. I experimented with different shades of red and pick out two I liked the best, however when I asked a friend of mine they said that the colour seemed more pink and girly so I decided against using the second logo. I used a different font type for the first logo as I thought the logo will blend in with the text if I used the same font, so to make it stand out I changed it. I think I will use the first logo I made (the red background with white writing and a black border) as it uses all the colour schemes I plan to use in my magazine and it looks good against the greyish background which I plan to use for my magazine. I will display my logo at the top left of the magazine as I have planned as most magazines include this, to make it easier to recognise the brand name in a rack in the shop. If I were to put it elsewhere this will affect the consumption of the magazine as the branding will become more difficult to find and people will not buy it.

 I researched into a lot of music magazines and looked at the different type of sub genres for the target audience. For example, Kerrang magazine is more rock/metal music and therefore is aimed at most men who like listening to heavy music with its outrageous fonts and logos. Whereas, magazines like Q and NME are posses a gentle look on the front cover which again reflects its target audience as the music they listen to is more indie and calmer. I think the fonts and colour schemes reflect my target audience as similar to NME’s as the sub-genre will be of indie music.