Sniffing Glue was a monthly punk zine, which is a magazine entirely

devoted to the punk culture, and in this case their music.

Production started in July 1976 by Mark Perry and ended in 1977 as hedid not want the magazine to become a mainstream music press, andhe encouraged the fans to create their own fanzines.

Evidently, from the images of the magazine, it is clearly not of the samestandards as the magazines seen today as it was created by the fans ofpunk music hence, some call it a fanzine. The lettering seen on the front

pages and entire magazine were hand written onto paper and then cutout and stuck down onto another piece of paper which was used as themagazine pages, this process was also used with the images.

Sniffing Glue has had a stylistic impact on many magazines mainly theNME, albums and article pieces seen today, with the iconic cut andpaste style to portray and represent the punk culture.

Typically fanzines tend to be for a very specific niche market as seen withSniffing Glue and tend to be short lived as the genres tend to developwhich is why they are normally self published.

The cover of the first

issue

The NME greatly depended on the success of the music genre Rock and Roll

which began in the 50’s. Rock and Roll was one of the first massive shifts in

popular culture seeing the term teenager develop. In the 50’s within society,

people worked shorter hours and did not work on the weekends which meant

that they had more leisure time such as listening to music or going to gigs,

which coincided with the creation of rock and Roll.

The young had more free time and money to buy records, concerts and wear

some of the clothing worn by these musicians which became the beginnings of

youth culture deriving the idea of teenagers.

Rock and Roll was created from the music genre the blues in America 1950.

During this time, America was facing segregation and the blues was created

by black Americans therefore, it was not broadcasted on regular charts but

their own. However, a handful of white Americans began to listen and enjoy

the blues and thought of adding another beat to it, which then created the

sound of Rock and Roll that became phenomenally popular, with artist such as

Elvis being recognised world wide. However, the success of Rock and Roll

before notable artists like Elvis really began from Bill Haley and the Comets with

their single Rock around the clock in 1952 which became a success, that

inspired many musicians to record this genre of music and the public to listen to

it.

Elvis Presley is the most iconic image of popular image to date, with himself and

many other musicians changing society and popular culture dramatically.

These artist set out to make a political statement and rebel through their music

which horrified the older generation which created a morale panic.

Rock and Roll artist introduced the daily wearing of jeans which were thought

of as labour clothes in the cotton fields and were never worn outside of work

until musicians started to wear them to seem even more rebellious.

The New Musical Express (NME) created by Theodore Smythsonwas first published in march 1952 as a journalism publicationwhich slowly turned into a more magazine format in 80’s.

The NME features musicians from the genres of indie and rockand the intended audience take music very seriously andwere mostly very fanatical young men.

The music magazine changed in the 2000’s to compete withglossy tabloid sized magazine such as loaded, as the NMEused to be printed on newsprint and broadsheet in size and inorder to compete they had to develop, as audiencesexpectations had changed.

From the images it is clear that the NME’s format andtypography has changed. However, they have kept sometraditionally aspects through their transition into the modernmagazine with the pages kept as newsprint but the front coverglossy which gradually moved to full colour print.

The magazine company loaded was produced in the 90’s as alifestyle magazine predominantly for young men, with articleson fashion, music sports etc. Which became very successful.The magazine used highly sexualised images of women thatwere photographed in line with the male gaze as their bodieswere objectified. Loaded was one of the first magazines to beprinted in tabloid size and a glossy magazine format whichsoon became successful within society hence magazine likeNME had to follow suit or else they would decline.

Smash Hits production coincided with theintroduction of MTV music videos in 1978 to 2006by Nick Logan who previously edited NME, whichallowed the magazine to take a more irreverentapproach to music, promoting pop music to anaudience of young girls.

The magazine was one of the first to introduceposters, images of artists and lyrics of songs whichwere becoming more popular to the audienceduring the 80’s.

Evidently, the magazine developed becomingmore vibrant and urban to cater for teenagers ofthe 2000’s as they were so different from theteenagers from the 80’s, and in order for themagazine to compete with other musicmagazines they had to due to the changedexpectations of magazines

The music consumed by the youth culture is inopposition to the older generation, as their tastesare formed to be aggressively different to that ofthe older population, and magazines aredesigned to appeal; to that generation gap.

After the 90’s the internet became more of a success dueto broadband which allowed faster internetspeeds, making the internet more instant and user friendlytherefore it became ubiquitous.

Content on the internet is free as it is a democraticplatform and information can be found online, which ledto the decline of magazines as the information found is notpoliced, unlike magazines.

Especially with the development of 3G on portabledevices and technological convergence such as mobilephones magazines such as Smash Hits completely stoppedproduction, the NME and loaded faced a decline inconsumers and a decline in printed press circulationfigures.

In the present audience have the ability to consumemagazines online through Ezines which can be free orread through subscription. Ezines are more accessible andportable for this generation of digital natives within societyas in the 2000’s people are more on the go.