Planning and Analysing masthead

In order to start planning my masthead, I used adobe photoshop to create 6 possible mastheads for my magazine. As the magazine focuses around the 60's/70's era and the psychedelic music which was the anthem at the time, I tried to make my fonts as psychedelic as possible.

This is the first masthead I created. It contains a kaleidoscope of different colours, which links in very closely with the whole 'hippie' theme.

This is the second masthead I made. I have made the text mint so it links in with the colour scheme that I am planning to use in the magazine. The drop shadow will also let the text stand out.

This is my third masthead. I have used the same effect that   I used on my first design, but instead I decided to lighten the satin effect, resulting in a pattern which looks like a sky filled with clouds. Some people may also think that the pattern looks like smoke, which links in with the use of incense/cigarettes. I have also used an outline in order to stand out as much as possible against the light colour of the inside of the font.

This is my fourth masthead. This one also contains hints of a psychedelic spectrum of colours, but the main colour is a mint green, meaning that it will also fit in with the colour scheme I am going to use.

This is my fifth masthead. With this masthead, I have tried to make it look as similar to the text used on the Beatles album cover 'Magical Mystery Tour' as possible. This font clearly contains a wide selection of bright and vibrant colours, which will help draw in the attention of passers by. The thick black outline will help the masthead stand out immensely.

This is my sixth and final masthead. The main colour used is a mint colour, meaning this font like many of the others I have created will fit in well with the colour scheme I want to use in my magazine.

I finally decided that none of the fonts above looked professional enough for my liking so I decided to download a 'groovy psychedelic' font from the internet and transform that into a logo/masthead that I would like. 

I believe this final design was the most striking and mostly psychedelic of all of my attempts.

Magazine Profile

The price of my magazine as mentioned earlier will be £2.75, which I think is a reasonable price for a monthly released magazine.
I would like my magazine to be available to buy in all supermarkets such as Tesco, ASDA, Morrisons, Sainsburys, WHSmith's etc. I would also like it to be sold in music orientated stores such as HMV.
The magazine will contain many different articles in every issue including:

• "Track of the month" - a specially selected track from the archives accompanied by background information and facts
• "Album of the month" - a specially selected album from the archives containing interesting facts and figures
• "Artist of the month" - an artist or band from the era who has influenced one of the media team profoundly this month. This artist will most likley be the same artist which is displayed on the front cover or talked about in the main story. This article will contain all of the basic information about the band/artist which is not displayed in the main article.
• Tour Dates - for the bands and artists that are still around, we will provide a list of tour dates so people have the chance to go and see their legends play
• Desert Island Discs - I will try and catch up with some of the most influential musicians from the psychedelic scene and ask them to name 5 tracks that they would take with them if they were to be stuck on an island for the rest of their lives.

I have also decided to call my magazine 'Psyched' which is shortened version of the genre of music my magazine focuses on and also means 'to be excited' which will suggest to my audience that my magazine is new and exciting.

Audience Uses and Gratifications

People who use my magazine would use it to escape from the daily troubles and woes that today's modern society throws at us. The magazine as a whole focuses on music of past generations, and although the magazine will be heavily influenced by music, it will also contain information and references to life in the 60's/70's, helping them to vividly imagine what life was like generations back.
This also links in with the use of wanting to be informed and educated. The magazine will contain lots of information on the artists and how music was made etc, which will hopefully be new information to my readers.
Although they are not in my target audience, middle aged men and woman could read my magazine and revoke childhood memories of living in those era's, helping them to recover long lost memories and hopefully lead to them being entertained.

Recommended conventions as a result of the questionnaire

In the results of my questionnaire, I found out a lot of important information about my target audience who would be reading my magazine:
I found out that 45% of my interviewees read the magazine NME, and 0% of my 40 resultees have ever read Uncut. This suggested to me that I make my magazine contain similar conventions and layouts as NME rather that Uncut, as people are obvioulsy impressed by the way NME presents itself by the percentage of people who read it.
When I asked my target audience how often they read magazines, the highest percentage of them replied with 'I never read magazines' (30%.) As I actually need to create a magazine, I looked at the other two highest ticked answers, which were 'Once a month' and 'Once every 2-3 months' (both 22.5%) As a result, I decided to make my magazine a monthly release.
I gave my audience a list of artists who fit into the 60's-70's psychedelic/rock vibe to see how many had heard/listened to them. Out of the all the artists I had given them, atleast 6 people had heard of each artist. The artist who people had heard of/listened to the most was The Rolling Stones, gaining 95% recognition. The artists who have large percentages would be mentioned in my larger articles whilst the artists who had little recognition would be mentioned in small articles such as 'artists you should listen to' etc.
I asked people 'Which features of a magazine do you personally find appealing?' I recieved many different responses, but many people found features such as the colour scheme, the font, the main image/cover artist and the articles involved to be some of the most important features. I have decided to chose my colour scheme carefully in order to appeal to as many people as possible and I will also focus on making my articles and main artist images as exciting as possible, in order to wow my audience.
I then went on to ask my audience which colour scheme they would prefer: fresh mint, crushed plum, mellow yellow or baby blue. The two colours which recieved the most votes were fresh mint and crushed plum, both at 35%. I have decided for my colour scheme to revolve around different shades of mint as a I find the colour mint appealing and I believe no other magazine out there contains that colour scheme, making my magazine stand out from the crowd.
I then went on to ask them how much they would pay for my magazine. I gave them many different price ranges, from £0 to £5.00. The price range which recieved the most votes was £2.51 to £3.00, so I have decided to price my magazine at £2.75.
As a final question, I asked my audience if they prefered it if the magazine focused more on the celebrities or the music, or a bit of both. The answer which recieved the most votes was an even mixture of both (55%) meaning I will make sure my magazine contains an even mixture of articles focusing on the music and the celebrities behind the music.
As the magazine is heavily influence by music from the 60's/70's era, the font I will use for my masthead will be as groovy as I can make it.

Any futher secondary re-search

Similarities between the similar products I re-searched and annotated:

All the magazines contain autumnal colours such as red and orange, which portray a sense of danger and he 'reckless' lifestyle of  most of the celebrities mentioned in the magazines. Each of the products at one time or another focuses on artists who made their debut/reached their ultimate peak of fame in the 60's, and the main artist on the covers of the magazines I annotated madr their debut in the music industry decades ago. Each of them contains a striking bold logo in the top let hand corner of the cover page. Each of specific font covers I annotated also contained the names of the artists who the articles inside the magazine focused on as coverlines. Most of the double page spreads contained a full page picture of the artist who the article focused on, whilst the second page contained the article and text itself. Each of the contents pages also contains a section which informs the reader of the hottest articles and topics in that issue, whether it be the cover story or special features included in the magazine, and the page numbers associated with them.