7.1 Conclusion and Recommendations

CHAPTER SEVEN

7.1 Conclusion and Recommendations

The current look of music magazines have to be rejuvenated to ensure that music magazines survive longer. This report contains some guidelines to update the magazine looks by incorporating desktop publishing and fanzine graphics which will look like conventional ways of doing a layout with minimal computer software to handle the task. It can also be considered a retro style.

The graphic designers have to be smart in twisting and manipulating the software tools to produce this graphic style to save time and energy. The results from this research’s surveys will benefit the magazine industry and its producers especially music and youth magazines. The tips should be considered as an alternative to the existing desktop publishing looks.

Certain big corporate brands have used the techniques in this research. It shows that they believe fanzine graphics will attract their target audiences which are mostly teenagers, youth and young adults. Music magazine readers will be fascinated with the shocking and fresh design style.

The magazine that was done to showcase the outcome of this research features four of the fanzine graphic styles that got the highest votes in the random sampling survey. The styles are cut and paste, ransom notes looks, stencil art and also hand-written texts. These styles symbolize the voice of the current youth, who enjoys street art and culture. The graphic styles also represent independent publication that fits the current music trend where a lot of independent musicians from all sorts of genre are starting to surface onto the mainstream music industry.

The researcher looked into examples not only from fanzines that were produced around the world, but also products such as magazines, compact disc covers and posters that features the fanzine graphic styles. Three sketchbooks and one journal were done to get the final sketches of the magazine redesigned covers and inside pages. From rough sketches, the researcher enlisted the most appropriate layout to come up with the final designs. This writing and the final magazine design could be a set of guides to designing a music magazine that incorporates fanzine graphics and desktop publishing.   

It is hoped by incorporating fanzine graphics into professional printed music magazines, people will want to look at the graphics and appreciate it more. They will have the willingness to keep on buying them. New buyers will also show interest in music magazines because of the aesthetic value of the graphics. This is not to deny the easiness and cheapness of getting information regarding music online. But printed version music magazine should also be available and used hand in hand with the internet and mobile technology. Their survival should be prolonged. Music fans should support the existing music magazines because a certain amount of magazines have to be printed each issue. If the amount of sales drops, it becomes the main cause of a music magazine to cease publication. 

Music magazines must survive the test of time because printed version publication is longer lasting compared to multimedia medium such as television and radio. You can collect and revisit them whenever you want to do a reference or research but it is not that easy if it is a television or radio program that will be broadcasted once or twice and gone in the station’s archive. You have to go to the archive to get access to the information which might take a long process, and you might need to spend extra money and energy. The same goes with internet websites, after certain time the link will be broken, and no one can access it anymore. The valuable information will be gone forever.