TASK 2- Case study 2

The magazine ‘NME’ (New Musical Express), expresses the genre of rock and alternative music. My Magazine front page features the artist John Lennon. Usually, NME magazines’ focus is to talk mainly about one artist, so they mostly use a close up (CU). This magazine proves this as the shot type used is a close up. In contrast the photo could be viewed as a headshot, due to the fact that we are able to see a segment of his shoulders. We can interpret that this issue of the magazine could be a tribute of John Lennon’s career/life, as the photo is black and white. The implications of black and white are mainly sad, vintage or tragedy. Fortunately NME is at an advantage as someone could walk past this magazine and recognize the image, the masthead and remember the artist on the magazine front cover. Unfortunately, using this shot type puts NME at a disadvantage because we are not able to see what the artist is wearing, however, focusing at his shoulder, it looks as though he is wearing a vest.

The structure of the front cover is extremely plain. NME has highlighted some words in yellow to identify the importance of the words. For example, the masthead ‘NME’ is effective and important. When the magazine is on display we can easily identify the masthead from the image and distinguish it from the cover lines. Doing this will attract the audience into buying the magazine. Furthermore, yellow enhances concentration, which is an important part for the purpose of a magazine. The main cover line, "60 years of NME" links to the photo of John Lennon and the fact that the photo is in black and white as NME can be classed as ‘vintage’, and that John Lennon was an important part of their magazine.

The contents page is not double sided. In contrast, with the layout of the ‘Kerrang’ magazine, NME uses pictures which link to the text. The magazine uses Red which can be inferred as bold, which will appeal to the rock audience. Unlike ‘Kerrang’ there is no editor’s message. This could suggest that the magazine is targeted at a mature audience, who are more tamed than the audience who are targeted by Kerrang.  Furthermore, NME advertise a subscription offer to their readers and highlight the essential words that will draw in the reader (‘NME’, ‘ONLY £1’).Effect of this is for NME to gain profit, gain more readers and insure that people will be reading their magazines. The drop cap of the letter ‘S’ is used to show the audience exactly where the article starts. The rest of the article is short as it continues on the next page.