Analytical essay on front cover

The reason I chose this magazine front cover, is because of how eye catching it is, but also because it links well to sort of the same genre/theme of my own magazine that I’m studying. Straight away, we can see the high importance of the ‘main image’, as their head is covering the masthead – implying that this person is more important than the whole magazine brand itself! This would attract a music audience well, not only because of the main artists fans would want to buy this – but other ‘uneducated’ music fans of this artist and his genre. The way the main image is dressed is fairly smart, also suits the genre of rock/indie British music well due to the light blue colour of his suit. Although this person is dressed up ‘smart’, we can connote a sort of innocence and child-like behaviour almost due to his position and the way he is sitting on the floor cross legged.


Despite this main image covering the masthead of this magazine – we are shown a large image of an album cover of ‘The months best music’. The fact this image of the album is so large and takes up the majority of the space on the bottom half of the page, tells us that this is maybe the magazines main ‘selling point’ and they see that as one of, if not the main reason why people would buy this magazine. This is also may be true, because then the consumer doesn’t necessarily need to know who the artist is on the front cover, but instead intrigue them through their ‘monthly album’. Also, the font and colour scheme included on this album cover, connote British colours, and almost a sense of patriotism.

The actual Masthead itself of this magazine, uses a slab serif font – which connotes quite a strong and masculine title. These connotations of the font alone could almost mirror what the genre/contents is going to be like, or maybe even target audience, E.g., Magazine aimed more at men? Also, the fact that almost all of the text on this page, though cover lines, pugs and puffs – all seem to follow the same sort of font/house style, only difference being the variation in font size to perhaps show higher importance of some pieces of text rather than others.

This magazine understands well its purpose and target audience, we can see this through not only the entire pages house style and colour scheme, but through its catchy cover lines and promotional/monthly offers. “My mind was blown” is purposely used on the front cover of this page, because it entices the reader in wanting to know ‘why’ and therefore be drawn into reading on further. Also, in the top corner is shown a small *Free CD* which is shown well to make the audience want to buy this magazine, as they feel that they are getting almost a ‘bargain’ since there’s a ‘free’ item included.

The background image of this magazine front cover is very vibrant and abstract. Unlike many other magazines of a similar genre, it is extremely eye-catching because of this, which I feel that it is almost this magazine main sort of ‘selling point’. This is because without the abstract background with 2 very different and contrasting colours, then this magazine wouldn’t stand out as much on shelves etc amongst their competitors and other magazine manufacturers. This abstract background not only is eye-catching through the colour scheme, but also due to its unusual shapes and the way it flows. These shapes are almost one big outline of the main image, which once again draws the audience’s attention to the main image – reminding them what the magazine is about.          


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