The house style of this particular edition is black&yellow this represents the brands identity, this is consistent throughout the whole magazine and when I show the picture of my contents page that will be apparent. Next is the banner headline. The banner headline which is ‘The ultimate guide! Download’ is placed directly in the middle of the page layered above everything else. This is important as it’s a very bad idea to even partially block your headline as that is the most successful way to lure in your readers they need to know immediately what the main feature of the magazine will be so if it interests them they will pick the magazine up and buy it. Next I will discuss if there’s any captions on the cover of which there is. The captions are located on the three images at the bottom of the page these captions are just to make us aware of the three singers name this is used to simply let the readers know who they are and who they’ll be receiving posters of. Also a deck is used on the cover. A deck is where the headline is more than one line which in this case it’s two, ‘The ultimate guide! Download’. The magazine cover also features an exclusive. The exclusive is located at the top of the page ‘Iron Maiden returns: “We’re taking no prisoners”. It’s an exclusive as no other magazine will have the same interview conducted by Kerrang with Iron Maiden therefore it is an exclusive. An ident is featured with the company name Kerrang this is because Kerrang is written in it’s own original font once again this is part of the brands identity. Next I will discuss the layout of the cover. The layout itself is a pretty standard layout with the brand name located at the top with the main picture directly in the middle with the headline layered on top of it with features located at the bottom, this particular layout is a popular convention among music magazines. A strapline is also among the features of the front cover. To see this I will once again use the Iron Maiden exclusive at the top of the page. The quote would be seen as a strapline as it sums up the story of the interview. From reading this you get the idea that the interview will be about Iron Maiden returning with a vengeance, no holds barred etc. Finally tease devices are used within the front cover. These are located on the bottom of the page where Kerrang writes ‘plus!….’ and lists numerous features and band names which if a reader sees a band he/she is fond off they may buy the magazine to see what it’s for. But for me the main tease device is where it says ‘Slam dunk mega-review’ music fans would be very enticed to read on how good or bad the festival was.
Next I will talk about the institution which distributes kerrang, Bauer Media Group.
Bauer Media Group are based in Germany however they possess a British address too. They are highly known for their success in worldwide distribution of magazines.
The audience for kerrang I would say is to people between the ages
of 15-24. I think this because that is this age to most where music is one of the most important aspects of their life, I also think as a secondary audience to people who are interested in fashion as the magazine regularly features trend setters such as Oli Sykes, Hayley Williams etc. And would be targeted at the socio economic groups C2-E.
My covers main representation is music festivals for this particular edition but if it were just a single band it would be easier to list the representations say if there was a well known gay musician, you would write how they represent that gay people can still be fantastic musicians.
Next I will do the LIIAR analysis technique for the contents page and a double page spread from the same magazine.
First I will talk about the language of the two. As previously written one of the most important features in keeping the look and presentation of the magazine professional the house style. As you can see from the attached photo the house style remains consistent from what it was on the front cover of the magazine, black&yellow. However for the double page spread it differs to support and represent the colours and themes of the subject of it’s article Iron Maiden. Which in this case is dark blue.
On the contents page there features a thumbnail this time different to the front cover in the manner of neither have caption, if you look at the picture I provided you will see that on the contents page there is a thumbnail image of famous Guns n Roses guitarist slash, the thumbnail itself is located in a list of articles. He has his own feature in the magazine which is known as anchorage to link the two. However the double page spread features a thumbnail in the top right hand corner of the page and this time unlike the contents page thumbnail example I used is captioned. ‘a sneak preview of the final frontier album artwork’. Now if you look at the background of that double page spread it is a space theme which relates to the name of Iron Maiden’s upcoming album ‘The final frontier’. The headline of the double page spread is not a banner headline as it is not located directly in the middle of the page but it is still layered above the image of the band members. The headline itself boast another aspect of media language in stating before the headline that it’s an exclusive and only this magazine will have this interview. The layout of the double page spread has to adapt to the fact its over two pages so the picture is extremely dominant of the band members with the actual written squeezed in on the far left of the page. This in comparison to the contents page is very different. The contents page is divided into two halves one top one bottom with the main image being on the top and the list of contents being located at the bottom of the page. The logo of Kerrang features on every page either at the bottom next to the page number or in some cases such as the contents page in a sub heading. The target audience remains the same as previously stated apart from it becoming more select for the double page spread obviously big Iron Maiden fans are the target audience of the double spread and not so interesting to people like me for example who don’t care for Iron Maiden. The double page spread also represents the older rock fan. This is apparent to the bands age and the fact they’ve been around for some time now, this is represented in the picture of the band on the page.
No comments:
Post a Comment