Magazine News-stand Task

Today I went to Asda to take this photo to see how magazines are placed on the shelves. The rock/metal magazines were on a different side of the whole magazine section and they were places with other magazines like TopGear which is a car magazine and Empire which is a film magazine. There were other magazines around it however those two magazines were the closest. From looking at the rock magazines, one of the things I have noticed is the skyline.As we can see, on the shelves the customers can only see the top half of the magazine which means the top half has to be eye-catching so the customers could pick it up. An interesting element that 'MOJO" and 'Classic Rock' magazines have is the "FREE CD!" puff that they have added on the top left side of the magazine. As readers, we learn from left to right and the first thing we see when we star reading is the free gift which automatically makes us want to pick up the magazine to see what the free CD is. Also, on most of the magazines, the top sky line has the most known band and singer names because people would be more likely to pick up the magazine if they see a band they have heard of or that they are a fan of.

Another feature of the magazine that is at the top is the masthead on all the magazines. There aren't any magazines that we can see from the image above that does not have a masthead on display, this is because magazines have a reputation and the first thing customers should look for is the name of the magazine so they could pick it up. In addition, usually on music magazines, the main cover image is in front of the masthead which may be done to show the cover model. For example, Kerrang magazine has Ben Bruce as their mover model who is the main singer in the band Asking Alexandria. As Asking Alexandria is a famous band, when customers see part of Ben Bruce's head they are more likely to pick the magazine up. This means having famous/known people on a magazines front cover would increase the sales as more people are likely to pick it up.