Mixmag Evaluation

This front cover adopts a house style colour scheme, featuring grey, black and orange/brown. These are fairly neutral colours, but set against the metallic grey background look very stylish. Rather than photographs, the cover features stylised drawings of artists – this, combined the metal-like background colour make them look like graffiti stencils, something associated with the demographic for this particular magazine. The colours are mixed and matched in their use in the text, to highlight certain words, such as “DJ”. This draws the eye to key areas on the cover. The language used is mostly sensationalistic – for example “WHO IS THE GREATEST DJ OF ALL TIME?” This makes the magazine seem very interesting and knowledgeable and therefore the magazine you should buy. The cover features several common conventions – for example, the magazine logo is situated near the top left of the page, and on the opposite side of the page, at the bottom right, is the bar code. These are extremely common features to see on a magazine front cover. Other articles are listed on the page, though in smaller text than the key article. These seem to be mostly feature articles and reports from events, rather than artist profiles, which are more commonly seen in magazines such as NME and Q. This is a feature seemingly exclusive to this genre of magazine, proving it’s differences from indie and rock magazines.

This contents adopts an image-dominated style, with the predominant section of the page given over to a photograph. The photograph is taken with a wide-angle lens, and shows a busy party scene. This is geared towards the target audience, as DJs generally play in clubs rather than at gigs. The black background to the page also matches with this, providing the atmosphere of a dark club. To the right is a smaller image, taken from the front cover. The images are labelled with the page number for the article from where they are taken – a staple convention. The rest of the right side of the page is taken up by a list of important features from throughout the magazine, with the page numbers in brown, the headlines in bold and the descriptions in a smaller, non-bold font. This makes it easy to skim down the page and quickly find which article is where. The colour scheme is continued – the predominant colour now being black, with white and brown still featured. This gives the magazine a sense of cohesion. At the top of the page is a smaller version of the magazine’s logo, and a headline showing which issue of the magazine it is. At the bottom right, there is a page number, a common addition. Finally, the lower section of the page is used to describe the cover CD, and includes the tracklisting.

The strong design on this double page spread, with its diagonals, is extremely striking. Echoed in the title, the 3 photos, and in the stencil-style font used for the drop down letters, it all combines to make a fantastically designed page.  This cohesion is integral in giving a magazine a particular “look”. The photographs are also tilted slightly, accentuating the diagonals. The colour scheme from early is broadly adhered to, with the text and background being black and white respectively. However, a rainbow of colour is introduced in the images, making them even more striking. The mise en scene of the photos is very typical of the genre, depicting laser lights and a crowd in a dark club. The text begins on the left hand page, and is split into columns. This is far more aesthetically pleasing than huge blocks of text, and much easier to read. At the start of each major section, a large drop down letter is used to signal this change. The title, “LOST IN SPACE” is plastered diagonally across the page in huge letters. This gives it a sense of urgency reminiscent of “SOLD OUT” stickers, slapped across gig posters.