Magzines in my genre: Smash Hits

Smash Hits is a magazine produced fro pre-teen girls whom are interested in modern popular music and celebrities in general. Although this is a lifestyle magazine aswel as a music magazine, it fits into the genre of the type of magazine i want to produce.

The title, 'Smash Hits' appeals to the audience by having onomatopoeia, the loudness of music, fashion and teenage life is almost immediately screamed at us using the first word, the second word again is a very powerful word which refers to something popular and successful. The title has also been rounded off by using a screamer, again backing up the loudness of the words themselves. The title is rounded off by being printed in a sans-serif bubbly font making it appealing to the target audience by making sure that it doesn't look too formal, as this isn't what the audience is about.

The pink colour scheme on the front cover connotes a bubbly girly atmosphere, also the continuous use of the sans-serif font connotes a youthful and modern front. Despite the cover being conventionally right, it looks very busy, this is something to be aware of and remember during the production of my magazine as this could make the audience believe that the magazine is disorganised and messy throughout, again despite this, Smash Hits was a very successful magazine running for 28 years!

Within the magazine we would expect to find articles on artists within the top 40, fashion advice on how to look like your favourite celeb (most likely cheryl cole or miley cyrus) and make-up, hair, nail advice etc. The musical and fashion advice is a main selling point of the magazine. These articles give the girls advice on how to be like their idols, and what to listen to in order to become popular, and like all the other girls in their age group, 'Tweens'. (http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=tween).

Smash Hits addresses it's audience by appealing to their youthful, girly and slightly cheeky side. It does this by connoting a slightly outrageous and wild lifestyle, this is done firstly by the layout of the cover itself, the pictures are on a slant, also there is lots of bleeding of the pictures, coverlines and other features on the cover. Secondly the use of sans-serif font connotes a generation that does not conform and doesn't want everything to look neat, this all appeals to a 'tween', as all they really want to do is fit in with the stereotype.

The photographs on the main cover are all famous. They are people which interest the audience of this genre, for example, Chantelle (blondie in the bottom left corner), she appeals to the younger generation of girls because she, to them, is a perfect role model, she is famous, blond, pretty and has rather large breasts. These people have been placed on the cover of this magazine for one purpose only, to attract the audience of 'tween'. Also, again, the pictures have been laid out in a slightly manic fashion, i think that this is to again connote an atmosphere of cheekiness.

The audience of Smash hits would be girls, 'tweens' this is relates to girls ranging between the ages of 9 to 13. due to their age it would be impossible to give them a reading on the jicnars scale, but we could look at their parents, the parents of Smash Hits readers, they would probably be between an E up to a C2. The parents of the readers of Smash hits would be Aspirers and maybe traditionalists, wanting to keep children as children and have everything the same way as it was when they were young. I also think that they would want to aspire to be more than they already are, they are not happy with their social place and would want to move up in the world. The actual readers of the magazine, the 'tween', has attitude and wants to have the same pencil case as the popular girl, and if she doesn't have 'that' skirt by next week she'll be a 'social retard', or so she tells her parents...

The contents page in the issue of the magazine that i have is a very boring and dull one. It is the Take That special, which we have to take into consideration, as it will not fit in with a normal magazine of Smash Hits. The layout has been designed in a simple three column form, on the left we have the whole column filled up with text, simply white text on a black background. The next two columns are filled with the actual contents themselves. The only colours used are red, black and white, connoting an incredibly boring atmosphere. Although there are some pictures on the page they are very well organised and set up just one on top of another. The contents page does have a couple of conventions that don't connote complete boredom, on the picture they have used a larger text to show page numbers, this shows that the producers aren't completely unaware of the age group that reads Smash Hits. But saying this, this is a special issue that is directed at an audience that like Take That, which would generically be older. Again to contradict this, the creators should have realised that an audience that reads Smash Hits, would still like something other than a boring colour scheme to look at.