House Style

For my magazine there are various aspects of its design that will need to remain consistent throughout it such as font, colour and visual features. These things make up the house style of my magazine.

Font
The font for my masthead will be Impact, since it's clear to read and I think that it would stand out since I don't know of any other magazines that are using this font. The cover lines for my front cover will be a sans-serif font because this is generally considered to be more masculine which is what I believe the majority of my magazine readership will be. The main body text will be in a natural-looking font such as comic sans, which is a sans-serif font and I believe it will help to promote the tone of my magazine which is quite a casual one, which is in-keeping with what I believe my target readership would prefer.

Colour
The colour of my masthead will probably be blue, or maybe red, and the cover lines will be the colour out of those that I don't pick. The main body text will be yellow, or blue if I feel that it looks more professional. I don't want to make any final decisions on colour since I believe that I may change my mind after having taken my photos. The background colour will either be a off-white (dull) colour so that it doesn't come across as too bright, or black because more text will stand out on top of a black background and it also makes my magazine appear more masculine since black generally appeals to teenage boys more.

Visual Features
My main visual features are going to be consistent throughout my magazine and the first of these is that at the bottom of both the contents page and both pages of the double page feature article I will have the month and year of issue, and the page number, under a separation line which separates this information from the rest of the pages. All of my images will have the same formatting of a small shadow off of the edge of the picture. On both my contents page and both of the pages of my feature article I will have 2 main columns, however on my front cover I will have 3 since I want to have cover lines either side of the cover model who will be in the centre of the image.

Reflection on Research
My research on house style in existing music magazines told me that it's important to have a set of colours that are used consistently throughout my magazine. This is to create a sense of familiarity with my magazine that the audience can relate to.