ANALYSIS OF FRONT COVERS, CONTENTS PAGES

AND DOUBLE PAGE SPREADS

By Bethan Revill

FRONT COVERS

By researching five different alternative rock front covers, I have come to a

conclusion of how this genre magazine portrays certain genders and classes

and how they portray them in the sense of stereotypes, ideologies  and how

they appeal to the audience through the use of conventions and layout

choices.

For starters within the front cover of the genres magazine, the cover

models are a mixture of men and women. The does not fit with the main

ideologies of gender when it comes to music magazines. Women are shown

as being equal to men in the alternative rock genre and this is uncommon in

other genres. Quite often the female cover models are shown to be smiling

and laughing, whereas the male cover models are shown to be serious.

I was surprised by the amount of different house styles in this genre.

The colours are red, black and yellow. I didn't think yellow would be

one of the main colours as it a very bright colour and doesn't seem to fit

the ideology of alternative rock. Also the bright colours tend to contrast

the dark, making the words pop out more. The typography tends to

looked smashed and broken. This hints that alternative rock music is

loud and doesn’t fit the norm. The colours of text and pictures contrasts

and really stands out, for example yellow writing on a black

background. The main clothing colour tends to be black; this fits the

dark representation of the genre.

CONTENTS PAGE

After analysis five contents pages, I have found out how they

appeal to audience and they represent the alternative rock

lifestyle. The contents pages all stick to dark house styles, black

and dark blue. This represents the attitudes portrayed by artists

from this genre. All the images are large, this catches the readers

attention and makes them more noticeable.

The ‘pick and mix’ theory applies to the majority of the

alternative magazines I have analysed. This shows the magazines

want to appeal to as many audiences as possible.

Iconography is used massively in the contents page.

The cover models are wearing dark clothes, leather

jackets and jeans. This shows them to have a ‘bad’

attitude. In most of the pictures the cover models are

serious and not showing any expressions.

DOUBLE PAGE SPREADS

I have analysed several double page spreads. While doing this I have

found out their portrayal of alternative rock artists as well as they sort of

stories that the audience likes to read.

The images in the double page spreads usually cover a whole page

(sometimes two), this instantly attracts the readers attention and makes

them notice the article next to it. The images are usually the band

messing around or acting seriously, there is no in between. This shows

different ideas of the genre.

The stories are mostly interviews about a new tour coming up or an

interesting story that grips the reader.