Analysis of Front Cover

I wanted to analyse a front cover of an exsisting magazine in order to help me get ideas from my own and see what they do in order to draw in their audience. This will help me decide how i want to set out my front cover and give me idea's.

       

         Kerrang magazine is a rock magazine and from the front cover I can see that inside there are going to be lots of stories on rock artists, albums and media news stories around certain rock artists. The target audience for this magazine is teenagers/young people who are interested and listen to rock music and enjoy it. The central image is of the lead singer of evanescence, Amy lee and she has a direct mode of address. This shows that she wants a personal relationship with the reader as she is directly looking at them. She’s on the front cover because evanescence is releasing a new album and a lot has changed in the band. The anchorage text says ‘Amy lee bares her soul’ and this implies that she is going to tell the reader everything about what’s happened and her life, which is why the direct mode of address works because she wants to show that she feels confident about this and wants to tell them. The overall message that the artist is trying to give is that she’s ready to tell everything and she isn’t afraid. There are buzz words on the cover like ‘win’ and ‘plus’ which makes the reader want to buy the magazine even more because they could win something and they get more for their money.

                The title block is in black and has like an edgy cut out font and this tells us that it’s a rock sort of magazine because its messy and it’s also in capitals which are often interpreted as shouting. The title of the magazine is also the title of a television music channel so the readers of this probably listen to the music channel and vice versa. Also its trying to give across a reckless image, which is often the life of a rock star as they are laid back and don’t really care. This magazine has been styled to fit in to its rock genre as it’s very dark and this is typical of rock style. The puffs such as ‘SACKINGS! LAW SUITS! HANDBAGS! AXL ROSE!’ suggests that this magazine has a lot of scandal articles and information on artist which is typical of a music magazine. This suggests that the people reading this are interested in the lives and scandal surrounding the artists. The house colour style is yellow, red black white and blue, which are a lot of colours but are all quite bright apart from black. This makes the black stand out and also draws the eye to the magazine because its really bright and attracts their attention. They also use quite bold fonts and most are in capitals to make them really jump out and be noticeable to the reader.