Textual Analysis Kerrang

Kerrang
Issue 1293

Price £2.20

Sections in Magazine 7

Front cover

On the front cover there are a variety of cover lines, for example, artists names and band names that are featured in the magazine. The colour scheme for the magazine is black, yellow, red and white, you can see this because of the yellow black colour as a background for a strapline and also because a cover line is written in yellow writing. Red is also used  as a background for writing in the shape of a circle, however black is the dominant colour.

The magazine includes posters and the cover lines mention them as well as other articles that are in the magazine. The magazine’s front cover is attractive because of it’s range of pictures and graphics used. The font and also the colours are used to make the magazine more aesthetically pleasing. The front cover is full of information, it's cluttered and it looks like the reader would get good value for money.

The Masthead is an onomatopoeia word, and suits the magazine type that it's used for. The sound 'Kerrang' is often said to be the sound made when strumming an electric guitar. The Masthead is written in bold and is also made to look like smashed glass, to further the feel of the 'hard' rock theme the magazine has.

The target audience, music lovers, will be more attracted into buying it because of the appearance. Within the magazine are other appealing features such as the inclusion of posters of bands, solo artists ect. The presence of the posters could be a factor which is taken into consideration when being purchased, because this magazine has posters then it is more likely to be chosen by a reader than a magazine which doesn’t include a poster and/or gift.

Contents

The contents page is spilt into sections or columns, this make the page more appealing to the reader as it is easier to read the different articles or headlines. The different columns are called names such as, News, Feedback and Swag. These common terms are familiar to the reader and therefore are easier for the reader to understand and relate to. The use of easy to understand language such as these are again appealing to the magazine’s young target audience.

The contents page again continues with the same colour scheme as the front cover, this continuation shows consistency within the magazine and that the presentation not only in layout but also in colour has been thought through.

It is interesting, but not uncommon to find the contents of a magazine to be placed underneath or even over a dominating picture on the page. The picture is often a major story or article within the magazine and therefore takes priority. The presence of a picture on the contents page usually peaks the readers interest to the story, kind of like an advertisement for that story. As with any magazine, the biggest and most popular story is first and usually takes up more of the contents than other stories.

Double Page Spread

The band Placebo are the main focus of the double page spread. On both of the pages is a picture of the band performing, I would think at the concert that the article is about. This draws the reader in and shows them a visual reference for the article, so that they aren’t just reading about it, but also seeing something to refer the writing to.

The main part of the article is placed on the left hand side of the left page and is in a typical column layout. The writing is spacious and easy to read with the colourful background. This leaves room so that the text does not overlap onto the picture so much as to obstruct what the picture is showing.

On the right there is also some short quotes from three people who went to the concert and their own opinion on the concert and the band. The layout for these are basic and include a picture of the person who the quote is from. The text is a basic black, just like the rest of the magazine, again this shows consistency within the magazine. However, the only colour within the double page spread is the lighting you can see in the picture, which is, green, white, red and purple.