What to do for C. Main Task: research

Post 1.
Textual analysis of existing media products.

For this post you will do six textual analyses of existing magazines. Two front covers, two contents pages and two feature articles (double page spread). They do not have to be exclusively music magazines, as many music magazines can be considered to be ‘lifestyle’ magazines as well but you will need to analyse at least one front cover that is of a similar genre to the magazine you intend to make.

The actual analysis of front covers will focus on the genre of music, images used, fonts, colours, layout, cover lines, masthead, selling line, rule of thirds and anything else you wish to mention.

A similar analysis will be used for the contents page along with other information you get about the actual contents of the magazine. Make sure you discuss the conventions used in the contents page – layouts, regular / feature article sections, other conventions used that are specific towards that magazine – e.g. NME always have a band index list on their contents page.

For the feature article you will need to discuss layout, columns, gutters, drop cap, pull quotes, images used, colours, fonts and style along with anything else you wish to mention.

Each analysis is approximately 400 words. You must address forms and conventions and how the magazines you're analysing target their audience and also ensure you use correct media terminology. Use the sheets given to you in class to analyse every element of the texts.

To present them on you blog you can use either ‘flipsnack’ or ‘Issuu’ or another online document viewer, or you can produce them in PowerPoint and upload them to Slideshare. Don’t forget that you will need to convert the finished word document to a PDF file if you want to upload the analysis to Flipsnack or Issuu.

You should aim to complete at least 1 analysis from this task in Prezi!