Friday, 11 October 2013

NME Magazine - Front Cover Analysis

The type of genre magazine that I have chosen is Indie/rock because their appearances and style of music are always something to cherish, as they’re sometimes underrated against other well-known genres, such as, POP, R&B, Country, Classical and so on.
NME includes different types of elements on their cover, in order to make sure they attract the appropriate target audiences to its genre. The masthead for this chosen magazine entitles ‘NME’, as it appears to be an abbreviation for New Musical Express which gives the magazine a different feeling of approach; whether I’d be interesting or not. Also, the font style and size of the Masthead are capitalised, bold red which appears to be clear and neat to the readers so they know what the title of the magazine it is and as for the colour red, it makes the Masthead stand out from the magazine as its placed at the top left corner, which is a typical thing to do for any type of magazine to publish. The red used could mean dangerous and it may freak you out as the writer was intending to give that kind of feeling and reaction to its own appropriate target audiences.

The type of image chosen for this issue of NME magazine features a British-musician and is famously known for his indie pop/rock music in the making. As you can see, the image is a full image shot (far view) and the artist is looking at us; trying to engage and interact us with the target audiences. His style of clothes are all black from head to toe because people who are a fan of indie/rock music tend to dressed and favours the colour black more as it represents their own set style of genre – as it stands out from the other types of music genre in the music industry. Along with that, he’s also holing a red & black guitar strapped around his shoulder which establishes that he is an artist by the way he holds the guitar and stand, professionally.
The strap line under the masthead, titles his name, Johnny from ‘Johnny Be God’. The sub heading makes us curious in why they used the word ‘God’ almost as if they’re praising that he’s the God or Father of Indie/rock music genre. His full name are then revealed underneath the subheading, in a funky black and bold but smaller in font size this time because it’s telling us that we already know his name by having him on front page but as for some newcomers to the genre, they won’t be able to know who he is.

The front cover of NME magazine features other latest updates, placed the right third of the magazine  for example, at the right hand side reads Plus and underneath it includes,  ‘ACID IS BACK’ in bold red letter which illustrates us that a known type of group are back in the genre industry; advertising their comeback with a new album ahead. This would be able to interest its own audiences if they’re a fan of the indie group, ACID and be able to engage with the magazine along the next few pages to read more about it. However, the main update of the front cover was Johnny Marr winning the Godlike Genius award which it would surprise its own supporting fans in the indie/rock world. Also, the strap line for the magazine ‘JOHNNY BE GOD’ illustrates us a hint about what the whole issue of the magazine would be about, filling up the font covers with intensions.


NME magazine placed their barcode, price and dateline in the corner spaces as strap lines are always included on any type of the magazine to try and attract its own audience’s purpose. The magazine uses a lot of varieties of font styles and sizes that are appropriate and appealing to its audiences, as it’s very artistic and contrast as the colour schemes used are mainly contrasting and bold colours, such as red and black; which gives off a serious and cold-blooded first impression. 

The background information of NME magazine is that they produce weekly magazine because they don’t want their audiences or fans to wait a period of time for the next issue to come out, as this way, they would be able to lose their main target audiences. I also found out that the quality of the paper inside the NME magazine are newspaper material; which means the writers and publishers of the magazine doesn't care about the paper quality and the whole appearance but the quantity inside it. For example, the main artist obtained, the text information collected and the layout structure of the pages intended. 

Overall, this type of magazines main target audiences are pointing towards the teen sample audiences who have interest in the indie/pop music genre of the magazine. The features in front of the magazine would be able to persuade and inspire the ‘fans’ who’s into indie/pop music to be someone like the artist – and then they would purchase the magazine too.



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