Wednesday, 24 November 2010

Rocksound Cover Analysis

The cover
The magazine is titled ‘Rocksound’ which connotes that the genre of music included and featured is rock music.

The title logo is white and in capital letters. There are no spaces between the words ‘rock’ and ‘sound’ and the edges of the letters on this particular font are meant to look worn or 'distressed'. It is partially hidden by the front-man of the band ‘Bring me the Horizon’ but it is still recognizable of saying ‘Rocksound’. It is in a sans-serif font. The logo is similar to many magazine titles, particularly in the Rock genre as, for example, it is in capital letters (like NME, Q, MOJO, Kerrang! etc) and is distressed (like Kerrang!).

There is a strapline. It says "Exclusive! Brigade CD Inside + Win! a PlayStation 3" and is all in capitals. It is in a sans-serif font like the title and is mostly in white except for "Exclusive!" and "Win!".


The main image is of the band ‘Bring me the Horizon’ all standing in a group, with the lead singer standing slightly in front of the other four members. They are all staring straight at the camera and are all wearing plain white t-shirts and dark jeans. They all have expressionless faces which don't seem to display any emotion.


No other images appear on the cover.
The content promoted by the cover lines is Bring Me the Horizon's "Past, present and future", an access all areas report on the band Architects' current tour, Escape the Fate's new album, 30 Seconds to Mars' frontman's "famous last words" and Cancer Bats answering questions from fans.
• Explain the connotations of typefaces (fonts), graphics, colours etc.
I feel that the connotations of the colours used (Black, white, red, yellow and a small section in blue) are used to make the magazine as eye-catching as possible. As the background is black, the fonts used over the top must be legible and clear, which means that the colour must be as light as possible, while also standing out. The contrast of using white text on a black background is very effective, as both colours are polar opposites, yes compliment each other. The yellow writing on the black background also has a similar effect. The fact that the writing for the title and the main cover-lines is the same colour as the t-shirts worn by the cover band (Bring me the Horizon) works very effectively in setting a house-theme. The yellow and red fonts are used to make the writing stand out from the rest of the sentence, for example making 'Exclusive!', "Win!" and "Ten page special + Posters + Stickers" stand out amongst the white text.
The yellow 'sticker' graphic is covering the Rocksound title, making it so that the reader can see it as soon as they've looked at the title. It also stands out amongst the black background and white font, very much like the yellow text. It shows a sense of urgency to the reader by being so clear, making them feel that they HAVE to know whether "Danger Days" is a "Win or Fail?"
The language used is very direct and aimed at the reader e.g "Cancer Bats: answer YOUR questions" and "Win!" making the reader feel like the magazine was written only for them and gives them a sense of involvement.
The cover of this magazine looks similar to many music magazines aimed at this particular genre (rock) as it has a photo of a band on the front cover and there are cover-lines on the sides, with the band names larger than the comments about them. The unique selling point of this magazine (USP) is that it is released monthly rather than weekly, so includes more content etc, a compilation CD of the 'latest music' comes with every issue and also other additional "free gifts" such as posters are included most of the time.
The size of the main story's cover lines is very big and distinctive, which makes it stand out from other magazines which use more subtlety.

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