Front Cover Analysis

NME (New Musical Express) is a popular music magazine brand owned by the Time Warner Company. I have chosen this magazine front cover to analyse as it has many of the normal conventions a typical music magazine has included.

From the looks of it, this magazine is aimed at people aged from 13 – 21, there is a bright colour scheme used, The text looks like it has been cut out and stuck onto the page giving a very informal feel to the cover and there is also a give away promotion.

The main central image is a picture of the band Bloc Party, the mise n cene of the image shows the band members are all wearing modern, casual looking clothes and the image itself is once again a cut out. I believe that the images mode of address for this magazine Is a young casual student way which is also I feel the relationship it wants with its reader, the cover wants the reader to feel as if it is a casual student type product so that more of the student type demo graph will buy the magazine believing that the content is focused on relating to themselves.

On this edition the band Bloc Party is on the front cover and almost straight away you can tell why, there is a CD attached to the magazine and the masthead has in large letters that there is a “Free Bloc Party” CD included, the reason for this is also made clear as a smaller banner on the right of the cover shows “New Flux Single Remixes”. This type of promotion benefits the band as well as the magazine as the offer of free goods will almost always persuade more people to buy a product, the band get extra exposure and mostly likely increase record sales because people might enjoy the free songs and decide to buy more.

The puffs on the left of the central image are full of exciting adjectives that describe interesting articles that feature within the magazine in order to entice potential customers into purchasing the product. On the right of the central image the puffs focus on what the magazine is giving away, and its promotions. All of the puffs are in informal fonts and colours again appealing to a younger demo graph.

In conclusion I believe that the informal layout, bright attention seeking colours, free give a way’s, puff’s and cut out style image all appeal to a younger demo graph of students and attract them into buying the magazine very well, I will certainly use some of these conventions and ideas in the creation of my product.