The NME
This cover of the NME has Lilly Allen as its main image on the front cover. She is
looking directly at the buyer/reader to create a connection between her and the
buyer/reader. The fact that she is looking directly at you is saying “buy this magazine”
directly to the buyer. They have put Lilly Allen on the front cover, along with
a coverline, because there is a feature article about her in the magazine. She
appeals to the NME’s target audience
of Men aged 17 – 30 because she is 26 (i.e. she fits into the same age
bracket). However, it could be argued that because Lilly Allen is female that
she doesn’t reflect the target audience of the NME.
The NME makes
very good use of coverlines (the details of contents in the magazine). The main
coverline about the Lilly Allen article makes good use of bold, interesting and
attention grabbing font, which is deliberately different to all the other fonts
on the front cover to make the article coverline stand out. There is very
little blank space on the front cover. After the main image, main coverline and
masthead, the front cover is full of coverlines at the top and bottom that tell
you about smaller articles in the magazine. My only criticism of the smaller
coverlines is that some of them only tell you about the bands that are
mentioned e.g. it says ‘Plus Franz Ferdinand etc.’ In other words, it does not
give the reader a reason why they would want to read those articles, like it
does in the other coverlines.
The masthead (magazine name and logo) of the NME is distinctive and easily
recognisable. It has been used for years but has had some minor tweaks to it.
Intriguingly, the NME does not have a dateline or a tag line on its front cover.
Traditionally most magazines would tell you the date it was published and would
give you a tag line (e.g. ‘Your No. 1 Music Magazine’) to sell it to you. The NME is so popular and distinctive they
may have decided that it simply does not need a tag line because its readers
know what to expect from it.
The NME makes
good use of language to talk to its readers and reflect the way they would
talk. An example is the coverline ‘New Monkeys Tunes’. ‘Tunes’ is much more
informal and they don’t use the Arctic Monkeys’ full name but refer to them as
‘Monkeys’ instead.
Q Magazine
The front cover of Q Magazine shows an image of Cheryl Cole which is the main image on
the front cover. The decision to put Cheryl Cole on the front cover is arguably
quite controversial, considering that Q
Magazine is mainly a magazine that covers rock music. For example, also on
the front cover is a coverline stating that bands like Muse are also featured
inside. This could be considered as Q
Magazine are trying to reach out to a wider target audience by placing
Cheryl Cole on the front cover, even though this potentially could lose them
readers. The photo of Cheryl Cole is in black and white, which does help it to
fit into the colour scheme of the magazine (black, white and red). It also
helps to make the magazine front cover a bit more striking. The photo shows
Cheryl Cole licking a large ring. This could be connoted as being sexual. As Q Magazine has a largely male audience,
this could be the effect they were aiming to achieve.
Q
Magazine makes use of a lot of coverlines to fill the space
on the front cover and to sell the magazine’s contents to potential buyers.
Below the main image, is the coverline “3 words… Cheryl Cole Rocks”. They have
used this coverline because, like their readers, Q Magazine has strong opinions and they are trying to reflect in
their magazine that their target audience has strong opinions too. The main
coverline also divides opinion. It has been deliberately put on the front cover
to provoke a response (preferably, for the makers of the magazine, that
response is to buy the magazine). The other coverlines include “The 10 best new
acts”. This is a good coverline because it suggests to the buyer that buying Q is in their interests. In other words,
if they don’t buy the magazine they won’t know what the best new bands are.
From the front cover of Q Magazine, you can tell that the magazine is aimed at a slightly
older audience than the NME and is
for more serious music fans. The price is higher than the NME, which is priced
at £2.20, whereas Q Magazine is
priced at £3.90. This suggests that the target audience of the magazine have
more disposable income. Some of the bands that Q Magazine covers are bands that NME’s slightly younger audience may not appreciate. For example, it
mentions U2 and Paul Weller in the coverlines.
