Magazine Front Cover Analysis

Joshua Whipday

Masthead

Cover Lines

Barcode &Date

Selling LineLeft Third

Main Image

Main cover line

Guitar World

The target audience for this magazine will be people who like the rock music genre. The types of music this magazine will talk about or advertise would be rock music particularly guitar rock. The magazine will feature famous guitar players as we can tell by the one of the main cover lines, “Jimmy Page tells all”.

Masthead & Selling Line

The masthead of Guitar World attracts their target audience straight away as it instantly lets the viewer know that there will be information related to guitars in there. This makes it very easy for the viewer / reader to distinguish whether this magazine is for them or not. The selling line of this magazine would be “special collector’s issue!” above the masthead, this lures the reader in because it comes across as if this magazine is limited edition or just more superior than a standard Guitar World magazine. Straight away the viewer may be thinking this issue could be worth money in time to come.

Main Image

They have used Jimmy Page as the main image on this magazine because he is an idol to many Guitar enthusiasts and bands as he is one of the best guitarists in the world. They will also have used Jimmy Page as the main image because the main cover line of this issue is “the return of Led Zeppelin”, this is the band which Jimmy Page is the lead guitarist for. The fact that Jimmy Page has his back arched and head backwards suggests that Led Zeppelin will be coming back better than ever. Therefore this particular magazine would be especially attractive to Led Zeppelin fans.

Cover Lines & Main Sells

The main cover line is about the return of Led Zeppelin and the tour they are going to do. The other cover lines link to the main cover line, because they are about Led Zeppelins songs and also other bands and music which target the same audience. The sub cover line titles are in red so that they stand out to a certain degree. The main selling line of this magazine is that it is a special collector’s issue.

Masthead

Main cover line

Coverlines

Barcode & Date

Selling Line

Main Image

Left Third

Q magazine covers all genres of music and appeals to all music fans, therefore has a very large target audience. This edition of Q is targeted at fan of John Lennon and The Beatles.

Q

MastheadThe masthead of ‘Q’ magazine uses the colour red. The colour red is a powerful colour psychologically because it resembles many emotions ranging from passion to violence. Red also resembles ‘stop’ in many situations such as driving.

The selling line of this magazine is very important as it lets the reader know that it is a collectors issue, this makes the reader think that it could be worth money in the future as it comes across as 1 in few that have been made. This magazine plays on the fact that John Lennon is dead and tries to guilt trip the reader into buying it.

Selling Line

Comparisons

These two magazines use two well know people in the music industry to attract their audiences.

The ‘Guitar World’ magazine comes across as very busy and full of striking text and information on the front cover. They a very striking image of ‘Jimmy Page’ one of most well known Guitarists in the world on the front cover of their magazine, this attracts people who are in to rock music and even more people who like guitar rock and guitars in general.

The ‘Q’ magazine comes across to be more sophisticated. This is outlined by the old simple black and white photograph of John Lennon. I think this magazine would be aimed more towards people from the era of John Lennon.

These magazines are similar in the way that they both use famous and successful people in the music industry to grab peoples attention.

Ideas for your own magazine