Music Magazine Analysis

Music Magazine Analysis

The Observer – Music Monthly

Front Cover

Audience: The front cover of the newspaper companies (The Observer) Music Monthly magazine immediately highlights its audience of people who enjoy listening to popular alternative/indie artists but also new upcoming artists like Taylor Swift before she became big, which is shown on page 36.

Font/Image: Instantly I notice the bold font in the centre of the page stating “THE KILLERS”. Using bold capped font for the band highlights the power and popularity of the music group. As seen in the image, they are all wearing black in front of the red, white and blue flag. This makes all four band members stand out clearly as they contrast against the background. Below “THE KILLERS” it states about the band being “Americas most wanted” which relates back to the patriotic theme of the band.

Masthead: The masthead is not like other magazines as it isn’t big and stretched across the top of the page, it is placed in a white circle behind one of the band members. Although it seems like it isn’t important on the magazine, you can clearly see the name of the magazine due to the black font which is completely opposite to the white background.

The contents page is found on page 3 of the magazine. The content page includes all information needed for the reader to find a section that they wish to read and included is the page number written beside that to make it easy for the reader to find the topic that they want. In this case Music Monthly have made their popular stories larger than other stories which also included some images. For example, the story about Taylor Swift includes an image of her so the reader immediately understands the article is about her. This magazine is not the only magazine that includes images in their contents page. When creating my music magazine, I will need to take these ideas into account to make it looks effective and real. This double page spread is on page 36 and has a slightly different and unique orientation. As you can see in the picture, the article is portrait over two A4 pages, including a huge picture of Taylor Swift covering the majority of the space and then a small but detailed article at the bottom.

Overall, the front cover of this magazine is very successful as it has a consistent theme and shows a cool, trendy style. After deciding on my music genre, I will need to consider what colour scheme suits best and how to make my image/font stand out from the rest of the page.