Generic Conventions of a Rock/Alternative Magazine

Throughout these radial analysis's and studies, there were a few things that I noticed appear frequently, particularly about design.

· The colours on all the magazines (for font or vector imaging) were always bright and at maximum saturation. Rarely do you see grey/desaturated fonts, as they blend with the backgrounds.

· The colour schemes for the magazines also tended to always include black and white, with one or two other additional colours (which would be the bright ones)

·  Capital letters tended to be a MUST for titles of articles or the magazine. It makes it's importance stand out and makes people want to read the information more.

· If ever a quote is used/shown (which is almost all the time is), it will be shown in a different colour and possibly font, particularly the speech marks ("). This is so it attracts eye attention and lets the reader know it's not just text, it's actually been said by the person.

· For rock magazines, the double page spreads tended to go by a design of one page image, other page text over image. This was so the reader had a lot of imagery to look at.

· For the featured article, it was always that feature on the front cover. They had never advertised with a different band than the one they were mainly featuring.

· Featured band articles tended to not have any other articles on their pages, almost as if they owned them both entirely. This is to ensure there is no confusion whilst the reader is reading it and also to prevent distraction for their article and pictures.

· The magazines tended to have a cluttered/crowded layout to them; however it was comfortable to look at due to the genre of the magazine being a wild, loud one.

· On contents pages, they do not label page numbers that are just adverts/full page posters for products. However, if it is a pull out poster for a band, they will number it.

· There is usually a notice on the contents page which notifies the viewer they can subscribe to the magazine, thus leading them to another page in the magazine.

· Fonts were always at a readable size that could also pack in a lot of information into small spaces. The smallest fonts that usually are used are around 9px, ranging up to 12px for some articles. Titles tended to be huge font sizes though as in 50px-72px.

· The price of a magazine like this is usually around £2.45 - £3.99. It is also almost always included next to the barcodes or tagline in a small, white or black font.