Magazine research: Cover 2 & 3

Another magazine I decided to research was NME. I decided to use this as an example of a cover page, because when it is out weekly, it never follows the same cover schemes. This could show that the editor is confident to change the colour of the masthead, meaning it may be unrecognisable to people who may not have brought their magazine before.

Background information

The New Musical Express- also known as NME, is a music magazine in the United Kingdom which was first published weekly since March 1952. In the 1970's, it became the best-selling British music magazine, which then became associated with punk rock, due to the writing of Tony Parson and Julie Burchill. In July 2009, Krissi Murison became the first female editor of NME in September 2009. It is published by IPC Media and it's total circulation is 38,486.

On this cover of NME it runs with the themes of blue and black, however, this isn't a current theme in all their magazines as they appear to vary each week. For example when Rhianna was on the cover is used pink and black and when Florence from Florence and the Machine was on the front, she had black and white. The similarities in their covers every week are the masthead, they are all put in the left hand corner- for the same reasons as Q- and has the barcode at the bottom of the page. The puffs for Laura Marlin's cover is black and are written in bold, this is smaller than the masthead because the puffs are less important than the masthead. The main image is often in the centre of the page, and focuses from head to waist. It shows a more relaxed theme as she is smoking a cigarette and holding a mug. Underneath the picture or someone close to the picutre, it often has a pull quote from the cover star- this will be directly taken from their interview to make the reader want to know why they have said this, it leaves un answered questions. On the cover, it uses a mix of neutral and informal mode, for example, on the cover that Rhianna starred on, her pull quote contains swearing, which has been put on the front cover as this will be to attract others to read her interview. Finally, it also lists other famous bands and musicians because the person starring on the front cover may not be everyones favourite genre, so it adds: Florence + the Machine, Biffy Clyro and Kasabian to attract those who are less interested in Laura Marling.

The next cover is Kerrang! another popular music magazine. I decided to do this as it seems it would appeal to a different music genre audience, meaning it will appeal to different people.

The cover of Kerrang! uses the colour pallett of black, white and yellow, this is different from the typical black white and red as the have replaced the red with another primary colour- which is the yellow. There is also little bits of blue to break up the writting. The mast head is written straight across the top, and some goes behind the picture, showing the magazine is well know to do this. Extra bands are added to the top of the cover to attract other musical tastes and more pictures are used at the bottom of the  page, as they are not the main features of the magazine, but highlights what else is in the issue. The barcode is in the bottom right hand corner as we read this last and is the least important information on it. A basic font has been used in bold to stand out, and any puffs are in a smaller font, yet is still bold. This highlights that the information is still important but not as important as those in capital letters. Overall, this is a good cover, as there is not much space left on the page and it looks fairly busy.