My first assignment in this unit was to produce a textual analysis of a magazine front cover and I’ve chosen to analyse a ‘VIBE’ magazine, 15th issue. I evaluated the denotations and connotations of the cover and how the conventions of music magazines were presented on the cover. In my music magazine, I have used many features of real magazines to be able to attract audiences by the typical and flashy magazine style.
For example, I’ve used a large masthead at the top of my front cover, coloured in bright vibrant red with lighter red shadows to give a 3D eye catching attention. This is a very common feature among music magazines such as Vibe magazines. By creating my masthead in that way, it is able to attract audiences by being the dominating point on the magazine’s front page which displays the magazine brand name and is also visible when stacked on the shelves of the magazine’s retailers as the real magazines do to attract readers. Its large fonts show power in the magazines and its genre. The vibrant red illustrates urgency and the 3D effect amplifies this matter.
I’ve used colour codes for my coverlines to make them effective for the audience to read and be attracted to. As you can see, every one of my coverline is red and followed by a brief description in white. The red and white colour code prevents my audience from any confusion with other coverlines. Also this colour code gives an interesting and catching presentation as red and while goes well with each other and almost contrasting each other.
I have featured a central image of an artist on my front page which is composed of a single individual photograph, taken in a medium-shot. This is a common convention of music magazines as well which use a single artist image. Music magazines such as NME and Vibe magazines use medium-shots pictures such as the issues shown here. I have developed my ideas from these magazine front covers, however I wished in developing the idea of text on my model’s shirt, such as shown in the magazine Vibe, unfortunately I was unsuccessful sadly because I have missed organised my model’s costume. Furthermore, my image is in colour, on a plain dark background and denotes the artist posing and looking relative to the genre that my magazine covers.
In addition, I have used cover-lines and a barcode on my front page. Cover-lines are used on all magazine front pages as seen in the examples. This is to attract the audience by displaying the magazine’s content in short eye-catching, colourful titles. I used this convention on my front cover to attract my audiences. My cover-lines are also in different colours, sizes and fonts, just as they are in real magazines to connote a sense of variety. My barcode is on the front page, for retailers to register when my audience is purchasing my magazine.
I’ve also include a puff on my music magazine font cover. I designed this puff myself in Adobe Fireworks and its purpose is to attract an audience immediately and interest them with a competition to increase the chances for the audience to purchase my magazine.
In my contents page, I have developed and challenged conventions in the following way. Firstly, I’ve followed a similar layout to Kerrangs contents page and developed it to become more 3D lively effective and more vibrant colour. As you can see, I have placed an image of an artist holding a golden CD towards the camera. Also the colour theme provides a lively feature to prevent the page looking uninteresting. I’ve done this because I want my contents page to catch attention from the audience effectively to the different features of the magazine.
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