Analysis of exisiting magazines

The first magazine I have decided to put analysis on is the rock music magazine Kerrang!. Their colour scheme consists of purple, yellow, black and white. The yellow, purples and whites are very striking and powerful with a lot of attitude like rock music and the general stereotype of the people that actually listen to it. The black shows the darker side to rock music like emo. The fonts are bold, different and striking the use of bright colouring really helping them to stand out and emphasising what has been written there. The font is sans serriff and the magazine title has been cracked under the severe loudness of the music that is inside. It follows in the semantic field that life is loud which is Kerrang!'s tagline. The use of "your" makes it more personal to the reader and its context in the sentence makes you for some reason excited to know who has rocked your world. The use of the number "25" and the list of famous musicians names make it seem as though that if you buy this your getting a lot for your money. The main sell "rock stars who changed your world!" is the boldest thing on the cover as this is really going to interest Kerrangs! target audience.

The second magazine front cover I am using is the indie music magazine NME (New Music Experience). Their colour scheme is yellow, white and red. The use of the fairly plain colours to show that this magazine is more focused on the music rather than trying to dazzle readers with bright and interesting fonts and colours. The fomt os sans serriff which suggests and informality about the magazine and that its going to bore you with complicated and fancy lexis and vocabulary. The use of a rhetorical question again invites the reader in and it also introduces whats going to be in this issue. The use of the main sell which is Brandon Flowers from the US indie group The Killers will make people who are interested in the band more likely to buy this issue as they will see that they are th main focus here. The bold yellow lettering makes it brighter and far more visible on the black background and it helps to emphasise it. The font is plain and minimalistic to reflect its target audience of "indie kids" who try to dress differently and quite plainly.

The contents for the indie music magazine NME follows a colour of scheme of red, black and white. The contents is very clearly set up into sections and has a very helpful band index going down the side of the page so readers can easily find the band of their choice. The writing remains bold and in sans serriff so it is bold and striking but still minimalistic and cool relating to the target audience of "indie" kids that try to be slightly different but still quite plain and minimalistic. The contents has a picture of main feature of the issue to try and entice readers to that page.

This is a double page spread from the rock music magazine Kerrang! The use of the colour gold ties in with the semiotic field of the word gold manages to make the page run smoothly and keep a running theme throughout. Half the page shows a huge picture of the band. In this instance half of the heading is in serriff where the other half is in sans serriff this shows the maturity of the band and the fact that they like money. This page will appeal to its target audience as it shows a picture of a rock band that readers will appreciate as the readers of this magazine will be excited by their music.