FRONT COVER DECONSTRUCTION 1

The masthead is usually the largest text on the page, and it commonly stands out against the rest of the cover, in this case, some colours are repeated and the masthead, 'NME' is the same size as the main focus of the cover, which is the artist 'Jake Bugg'. The masthead is an acronym for 'New Musical Express' - this may make the magazine more appealing as it is easier to read and remember and doesn't take excessive amounts of attention away from the rest of the cover. It reflects what the magazine denotes, and the red stands out greatly against the black and white/yellow colouring, catching the audiences attention.

As well as colours in the masthead, the rest of the cover shows a repeating and effective colour scheme. Colours are important in magazine covers as they have to be relevant to the age group and genre of the magazine. In this case, the red parts are shown as more important as they stand out most compared to the more low key colours. The red parts demonstrate the most important parts as the artist that the magazine has focused itself around, the title, a competition for concert tickets, and unseen pictures of Nirvana, this is used to attract the specific audiences interested in the genre. Also the Nirvana part has been used as a main selling point, the use of the words 'exclusive' and 'unseen' make the audience intruiged to see these things that apparently nobody else has before, and because Nirvana are quite an iconic band, this point is emphasised more. The magazine does not publish too many articles/giveaways in red, as they want to keep it to a minumum to make it more noticeable. If lots of details were red, it would take away the fact there is only certain main focuses.

The coverlines on this cover are used to show contents of what is also in the magazine, without attracting too much attention away from the main focuses and without taking up too much space on the cover. They are commonly found at the sides of magazines and are smaller than the masthead. They are relevant but kept too a minimum. In this case, the coverlines are interviews with other artists in the genre which would attract the audience further.

'The 18-year old enemy of the X Factor' may appeal to audiences of NME as the magazine is aimed at more indie music, which is the opposite of what the X Factor represents. This is white to stand out against the main image. After this, it says 'hits America with Noel Gallagher' - Noel Gallagher is printed in yellow to make it stand out further against the white and black, this contrast would attract audiences of Noel Gallagher/his projects/music, which I assume would be a great majority of readers of this genre, and therefore the may be attracted into purchasing the magazine more to find out about Jake Bugg and how an upcoming artist can be linked to an artist of a more famous position so early in their career.

KEY FEATURES OF A MAGAZINE COVER

MASTHEAD - Title of the magazine - demonstrates name of publication.

MAIN COVERLINE - Also called 'sell lines', they are usually no more than 5 words and are a quick summary of the contents of the magazine.

BAR CODE/PRICE/DATE - Essential information for both the buyer and seller.

MAIN IMAGE - To display that the band Enter Shikari are the main focus of the magazine - this may demonstrate to the audience that this particular band have a large interview/role in the contents of the publication.

COVERLINES - Not as important as the main coverline, these act as small indications of the contents of the publication (what else is found inside)

PRINT BRIEF

Print Brief

I will complete two linked tasks. The set brief is as follows:

Preliminary exercise: using DTP and an image manipulation program, produce the front page of a new school/college magazine, featuring a photograph of a student in medium close-up plus some appropriately laid-out text and a masthead. Additionally I will produce a mock-up of the layout of the contents page to demonstrate your grasp of DTP.

Main task: the front page, contents and double page spread of a new music magazine (if done as a group task, each member of the group must produce an individual edition of the magazine, following the same house style).