Magazine Front Cover Analysis

Oliver Toone

Kerrang

This magazine is called Kerrang and it is aimed at people who listen to metal/rock music, the sort of genres that wont be in the charts. This industry is currently growing and more people are listening to this music so this magazine has become more popular.

Masthead & Selling Line

The logo isn’t just your normal logo, which is what you get with other magazines, it has a stand out font with the lines passing through it. This simulates broken glass, carnage which is what most rockers and metal heads would appeal to. The masthead is normally put behind the main image so it looks subtle but effective.

Main Image

The person who is in the main image is Oliver Sykes, he is the lead singer of the band called Bring Me The Horizon. Having him as the main image is good publicity for the magazine because he is a big celebrity in that type of genre. This magazine was published on may the 7th 2011 after they had won the award for best British single and best British Band.

Cover Lines & Main Sells

The Masthead is placed behind the main image so that it doesn’t jump out at you even though it’s the main text. It is still the biggest text on the cover though so it is still easily read. However it is still smaller than the image. The text that they use is normally just to promote other bands to a similar genre e.g. it says ‘meet Dave Grohl’s favorite new band’. There is colour on the cover but not much, normally just black and white but there is also yellow to highlight main subtitles and pink for other important information.

Comparisons

This magazine looks completely different, with the masthead being in front of the image and there are many more fonts on this cover. There is also a lot more colour. Also the main image is a lot more close up, only showing her face whereas the other magazine had a full body shot in the middle.

Ideas for your own magazine

These are just some of the text fonts that I considered to use, seeing that Kerrang used a broken glass effect on there Masthead I may use that. I'm staying with the black font because it stands out more. Also I'm going to take the centered image idea so that it is more apparent.