Initial Research On Chart Magazine/Styles

The Billboard Magazine and what they do?

 

This magazine is a chart music magazine that talks about upcoming artists and ones that are hot that week or month. They aim to suit a variety of audiences and they make their magazines and online articles as up to date as they can. The Billboard charts magazine finalises and defines the popularity of songs or albums in the United States of America. The results that are made by the public’s choice are published in the Billboard Magazine. These chart results are known as the Billboard biz charts and are basically online charts that are extended from the magazine. They do provide chart music results weekly and they have regular magazines also.

I like what Billboard magazine have done to this cover page on the left hand side as they have used the colours from the logo of the magazine and have sectioned off all of the text so it can be easily read and grouped together when reading. I also like the image for this cover as it is very simple and isn't too outgoing. Another reason why I like this cover is the fact that they have stuck to a particular layout. I think for this they have related the cover to the F layout quite well. They have the heading across the top, writing all down the left hand side and then the girl's (Carly Rae Jepson) top has fallen off her shoulder and if you follow the line of her sleeve this would make the centre of the F letter. Another way it could be the F layout would be following the line of the blue boxed text as it goes slightly further out than the other texts. Having a layout for a cover is important and looks better as it appears more professional and better laid out to the market.

 

In this picture are the charts of the week starting from the 12^th of January. All of these songs are a variety of genres and would be suitable for many different audiences. This would be good for my magazine as it means I can supply all target markets that are interested in the charts with something interesting and relatable to read. If I was to do a chart magazine, I wouldn't only do information and news about the latest artists etc, but I would also include the latest charts and how they have come out and this would include the market more as it would be there choice. I would also do a section about their opinions on the new music that is out and whether they think that it deserved to be in the top four of five songs.

 

This is an image of a chart topper, Ed Sheeran. As a chart member I am looking at his style of dress to see if I could use this for inspiration when doing my own magazine. He is wearing very basic clothing, of a black polo shirt and black trousers. On top of this he has black accessories, including a guitar band and a watch. The guitar he is holding is also a dark colour and the most predominant colour in the image would be the orange/ginger of his hair. You can see shades of this tone as well in his tattoos. This image may be suitable for a cover of a magazine because of its limited colours and how it could fit quite easily into a colour scheme associated with the colour black.

 

To the right is another picture of someone from the charts called Mark Ronson. In this picture, the man is wearing again, very basic colours of black and white and the image has a very predominant red colour in the background. The way Mark is standing wouldn't make it easy to use this picture for a magazine cover because he is slightly slanted therefore any writing placed on it wouldn't be as level as it should be. As well as this he is also not making eye contact with the camera which would also make the image less suitable.  Overall I do like the style of what he is wearing however I personally would find it a bit boring for the cover of a magazine.

‘The UK Music Charts are a collection of charts that reflect the music buying habits of people within the United Kingdom. The majority of them are produced by The Official Charts Company’. – Wikipedia definition of the UK Music Charts.