Analysing Billboard Magazine

Masthead/ Brand Identity- White, bold wording placed on a dark background. These colours contrast, resulting in the masthead catching the audience’s eye. Together the colours black and white connote sophistication and maturity. This appeals to an older teenage/young adult audience.

Puff- white and yellow contrasts with the dark background. It’s main use is to promote the ‘film and tv music conference’ as well as their website. It also informs its audience of what issue it is.

Billboard is published by Prometheus Global Media. This company is extremely well-known as it owns and operates a number of major entertainment industry trade publications. This is why in some issues of ‘Billboard’ it doesn’t matter if part of the brand identity is hidden due to the mass audience being fully aware what magazine they are looking at (due to other factors such as the continuity of the colour palette and the layout.)

Central Image is of Rihanna. This would attract an audience of both genders- in particularly girls due to many girls being fans of Rihanna’s music. In this picture Rihanna is looking directly into the camera over her right shoulder as if by surprise, or as if she’s got something to hide.

Coverlines are situated on the left hand side of the magazine. Each coverline begins with a catchy, snappy 3 word introduction. These are in a bold black font placed on white, this stands out as the white contrasts with the dark background. Underneath this is a small taster of what’s inside the article, leaving the audience on a cliff hanger- this intrigues them making them want to read on.

Headline/Splash- The big, bold, white font begins to fade to almost see-through towards the bottom of Rihanna’s name. This relates to the quote beneath this, suggesting that parts of Rihanna aren’t seen/known by fans.The fact that her tattoo is clearly visible to the

audience on the central image also relates to the splash as it makes the audience question why she’s got a weapon tattooed on her.

Rihanna’s nickname ‘Ri-Ri’ has been used as a pun ‘RE-REINVENTION’ . This adds some humour to the seriousness of her article. Only Rihanna fans would understand this pun as others may not be familiar with this nickname.

And more… • House Style- continuity of colour pallette: White, Black,

Yellow and Red. These colours connote sophistication, maturity and enjoyment. Most of the text is white, this contrasts with the darkness of central image/background making it stand out. The ‘in-your-face’ Yellow writing above the masthead promoting a film and music conference was also extremely eye catching as the brightness somewhat glowed against the black background which it was on.

• Mode Of Address- language is chatty and informal, which appeals to the teenage/young adult audience as they tend to sway away from using standard English when it comes to communicating with each other.