Font Research

Brand Identity Analysis

In order to keep issues selling when they are released, magazine companies must create a brand image suitable and appealing to the target audience. This can be achieved through making their name, colour scheme, logo and layout unique to any other magazine brand and also altering it depending on what is suitable for the genre. One of the main reasons brand identity is vital is because it makes the magazine easily identifiable from a far just from its visual features.

As you can see from these examples of MixMag magazine front covers, MixMag don't stick to the same colour schemes every time they release a new issue. Instead, their brand identity is created through the masthead font. Their masthead is simple and slick, which mirrors the dance music scene and also makes the brand identity recognisable. One reason why they may have gone against using the same colour mast head every time may be because there are so many different types of dance music, which wouldn't be reflected if the colour scheme was the same every time. In addition they use smaller text in simple colours for the body text which adds to the brand identity. 

The brand identity that I am going to create will have a exceedingly simple lay out but be more adventurous with the colours that I use for the body text. This will make my magazine easy to read but also add a bit of uniqueness as the genres of music I am including in my magazine are more underground compared to MixMag, which is

 more mainstream. Furthermore, I will use similar 

fonts for the body texts, like MixMag have done

every time to add to my brand image. I will also use the exact 

same big, bold font for my mast head but perhaps change 

the colour depending on what DJ I have on the front cover as

 a different colour may represent their music better.

Name of Magazine and why?

From my Questionnaire feedback I have chosen the use the name BPM which stands for Beats Per Minute. My other options were Cross-Fade and Bass-Ment. The reason I chose BPM over the others is because I think it has a more pleasing pronunciation and looks a lot more professional as well as how its an abbreviation of a relevant term in DJing and also fits with my target audience because they use slang and abbreviation like 'LOL' (laugh out loud). Another reason why BPM was a candidate for my magazine name is because its a really well known and used abbreviation by people who like to mix. Its relevant to the genre and has the potential to become recognisable.

Front Cover Draft

Excuse my poor artistic skills but this is my plan of what i would like my final front cover to look like. I might change some things like the text, the colours and the fonts.

Questionnaire Feedback

These are the results i got from my questionnaire :

BPM - (beats per minute) received the highest amount of votes for the magazine name.
£2 was the highest rated price for what people would be willing to pay for a magazine behind £2 which had 1 less vote.
The top two things people said they would expect to see in a magazine would be Reviews, upcoming artists, interviews and events with big names at festivals and clubs.
For the colour scheme question there was a tie between black/white/blue/pink and black/white/red/yellow.
Next, everyone who did the questionnaire said that they would pick up an magazine with informal language.
The top things people said they would expect to see in terms of events and dates was raves and track releases.
Next, the top answer for things people expect to see on a contents page was big DJ names.
lastly, everyone who voted said they would go to the magazine website if they enjoyed the magazine.

Questionnaire

I created a Questionnaire on poll daddy to help me make decisions on things like the price of the magazine, the colour scheme, content etc.

http://callumwarnes1997.polldaddy.com/s/as-media-studies-survey-for-dj-magazine