Sunday, 13 October 2013

Magazine Front Cover analysis


This is the front cover of the well established magazine 'NME', or 'New Musical Express'. This magazine mainly focuses on the idea of rock, but has no set genre. It can go from metal, to punk, to indie, to folk or to alternative. However it does not really explore the popular music culture or country music, as well as electronic music. It focuses on bands who use instruments and have their own written songs, and those who are exciting and new.

The mise en scene for this magazine shows us the three members of the rock band Muse. It clearly shows them as the most important story within the content of the magazine. However we get the impression that the middle person, Matt Bellamy, is more important as he is further in the foreground than the others, Dominic Howard and Chris Wolstenholme. We therefore can gather from this that Bellamy is the frontman of the band, as this is generally how photos taken of bands are portrayed; with the vocalist at the front. 
All three members are staring directly at the camera, so they are focused on their audience and are bringing them into the magazine to engage with them. 
The main tagline on the magazine is on top of the band, and is 'WE'RE OPENING A DOOR INTO THE FUTURE!', which draws the reader in as it is about the band Muse, who are known for their notorious and bombastic musical creations. This would make the reader intrigued, if not skeptical, of what the content of this magazine would be. Which is what they would be aiming for.
The masthead of the magazine, NME, is behind, but still prominent, the picture of the band. This is because it is a well established magazine that people will immediately recognize if they saw it on a magazine shelf. They therefore don't need to put the masthead in front of the picture as it will be easily recognized anyway. It may also be because the main content of the magazine is solely based on Muse, and so they are the most important feature of the magazine. 
The colour palette of this magazine consists of blue, yellow and white. For a rock magazine, this may come across as rather surprising. However, the yellow is very prominent in highlighting the most important features of the magazine, both the masthead and the quote from the main article. Yellow is a bright colour so it attracts the readers' attention first, out of all the colours. The buzz word  near the bottom, 'Plus' is also in yellow, highlighting what else is within the magazine. 
The puff is in red, attracting the readers' attention from all the other colours of the magazine, and it is therefore more prominent than the other colours. 
The rest of the content is listed on the side in a column, the names of the bands bold, but not as large as the others. It is showing the rest of the content, but those being smaller articles.The quotes within the columns are red like the puff, to fit in with the colour palette and also to show that it was a quote from one of the band members. 

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