Double page spread analysis

This is a double page spread from NME music magazine, featuring British songwriter and artist Lily Allen. NME is one of the worlds most recognised and iconic music magazines and covers all genres.

The purpose of this double page spread is to show how Lily Allen has had a lot of bad press recently and to almost hear her side of the story on the matter. This double page spread is made up of a title, image and text. The main heading is in the top left hand side of the page in a black and white block capitals, in squares messily placed and at different slanted angles. It is a similar punk type face as similarly used before by punk bands such as the Sex Pistols, as you can see to the right. This gives a sense of familiarity to punk fans and an instant connection as they turn over to the page. The title covers over half the first page and is being quite hypocritical about what the heading says 'People think I'm an attention seeker, but I'm just honest', because the heading is so bold it is attention seeking and comes across as quite rebellious. The fact that the heading is a quote from Lily from the article makes it more personal to a teenage audience as it is feels part of a conversation and makes it easier for a teenager to understand and relate to.

The background is white, which makes the page look uncluttered and adds emphasis bringing the readers attention to the image and text. Another feature that links the double pages together is the colour scheme used. The red, black and white colours all attract a unisex target audience as they have no particular gender connotations, makes it look professional with not too much distraction. The colour black suggests darkness, mysterious and in this particular setting rebelliousness. Red also links in with this and acts as a sign of danger and warning and helps show Lily's fiery personality.

The mid shot of Lily Allen, covering the whole of the left hand page gives an immediate punk feel. Lily has her hands on her hips  with her wrists facing the camera showing her tattoo, again implying a rebellious streak, she is leaning forward, turning her face and body to the right facing the text. She is wearing a checked tartan shirt which links into the colour scheme on the rest of the text, it gives quite a masculine feel and portrays Lily as a strong and attention seeking person, again is hypocritical of the heading. Lily's black hair is styled into a messy looking bob, making her appear as if she doesn't really care, stereotypically, like a emo teenager, this can be another reason why a young target audience may be attracted as they see Lily as a young successful role model. Lily Allen is wearing quite harsh black eye makeup again giving a harsh gothic feel. All of the above shows that before even reading the article, the audience can gain a good understanding about the context of spread and a clear idea of what it's about.

Billboard music magazine

This is the cover of 'Billboard' a weekly American music magazine devoted to the music industry, especially the music chart. The magazine in general attracts a wide target audience with chart music covering all music genres, just whatever is popular in the particular week. This particular edition seems to be focused around Katy Perry, a style icon and a recent pop sensation,  and appears rather girly and targeting more the female audience. From week to week I think the specific audience for the magazine changes depending on the main image and colour scheme. The female target audience is clear in this edition from the soft baby pink background and floral inspired dress and accessories worn by the very girly Katy Perry. The main image of Katy shows 3/4 of her body, side on with her hands near her heart in a romantic style looking directly at the camera, this relates to the genre of chart music as Katy Perry's  music often does well in the chart and many people are aware of her and she is a well known figure in the music industry. The image is framed with Katy's body slightly more towards the right with the straplines anchoring her curving body, all on the left. She is wearing a little black dress, with a pink floral pattern on and seems to have fake pale pink and yellow flowers draped all over her. This helps bring out the gentle girliness of the magazine and along with her neatly make up face and soft pink lipstick, she does not look at all threatening but instead promotes a feeling of innocence and gentleness towards magazine readers. 

The magazine is called 'Billboard', a billboard in literal terms a billboard is like a large poster advertisement, and so being a name of a magazine could suggest showcasing the latest music releases and 'billboard' magazines help advertise these.  This reflects the content of the magazine by making the reader aware of the latest music and top 100 tunes.  The copy on the magazine cover is all written in either black, white or yellow font and uses a mix of lower case and capital letters for emphasis on particular parts.  The mast head 'Billboard' is written in a simple black font with the middle of the 'b' coloured in red, middle of the 'a' in blue and middle of the 'd' in yellow. This adds more interest and magazine and makes the masthead more unique and recognisable, and quite a statement feature of the magazine. The largest text, other than the masthead, is the kicker 'Katy Perry', this links with the main image and gives a double impact and an instant connection for any Katy Perry fan. Some of the covers straplines read 'Can Taylor Swift's Q4 album debut with a million sold?' relating to music and attracting the female audience with another female artist and it asks a rhetorical question, getting the audience involved and think and answer the question in their own heads. Every little section of the magazine front cover has been carefully constructed, and I possibly a good example of the magazines intended target audience would be drawn towards it straight away.

This is the contents page from Billboard magazine, in the July 2009 issue. The first main focus of the page is the long shot of Hayley Williams(lead singer of the band Paramore) with her arms in the air, spreading the whole height of the page. She looks happy and excited, dressed as a candy cane in the July issue, this is unusual and makes the reader look to the smaller details of the page and they will see how it links to the page heading 'Christmas in July', explaining why she looks so excited. The page has a large heading at the top of the page, immediately showing to the reader it is the contents page. The large black, capital block letters of the word 'Contents' with the broken up style font links with the contents page as it shows how the magazine is broken down into different pages. The page seems to be split up into 3 columns. The left hand side of the page has a column of the pages with page numbers, written in black font with the main headings written in bold, capitals and a larger font, and the subheadings indented under them. On the right hand side of the page there are 3 other images of musicians  in a column, they are all the same size and are quite dark images and allow the main central image to stand out even more. The 3 images have a white number in the left hand bottom corner showing which page the image relates to and allowing the reader to quickly flick to that page if the artist attracts them. The image to text ratio is roughly 2:1 this helps show quite a young/teen target audience as generally the younger the person the less text.

The colour scheme used on the contents page ties in with the masthead of the magazine, the colours used are red, yellow, blue and black. The underline of the heading 'Contents' is the same blue used in the masthead title, which is in the top right hand corner of the page. The bodysuit Hayley Williams is wearing and her feather bower and trainers are all red, this is the most striking colour on the page and again helps show the house style of the magazine.

To the right is the front cover of this particular issue. You can straight away see how this issue of 'Billboard' breaks some of the typical conventions, for example, the masthead is written in white instead of its recognisable black and there are no straplines as such with a much more simple layout. This is a limited edition and attracts unusual attention seeing the different layout and Christmas related things in July.

The cover helps to see the house style of the magazine clearly and the image of Hayley Williams in the same candy cane outfit is one of the key features that the reader can recognise and associate with. Other features include the white background, black text and masthead (as seen smaller on the contents page). 

Analysing music magazine covers

Q is Britain's biggest music magazine covering a wide range of music genres. The name is explained in the tag line, 'Q the music' and at first glance appears to fit all the expected conventions of a magazine front cover. The magazine had a red, white and black colour scheme, which straight away suggests a unisex target audience, the main image and straplines also support this. The main image is Madonna, an extremely popular and successful pop artist, it is a mid shot of her side on, giving direct eye contact to the camera with quite a fierce facial expression. This can either appeal to men or women, other women may aspire to be like her and see her as a role model and they may want to gain the authority and power she seems to have, men are likely to be attracted to her more physically. Straplines like 'Michael Stripe, Russell Brand, Kaiser Chiefs, Girls Aloud..' show the magazines wide audience as these stars are all quite different, men, women, bands, showing the magazine does not just fit one genre of music inside, hopefully showing there is something for any music lover.


The magazine has a kicker of 'Madonna' in large red block capitals coming across the magazine front, this is very eye catching and links with the main image, giving a double impact for a Madonna fan. The layout of the cover is full, but not too overcrowded, the main image, and the block red name, and kicker are the first to catch the eye. The straplines all anchor the main image and give a nice even appearance. Across the bottom of the page there is a diagonal banner  in grey, saying 'Free inside! 70 page special Women In Music' with a smaller image of a women artist on the left, the diagonal appearance makes the layout look more complex and again attracts attention. There is also a pug on the right side of the magazine, in the middle, with the union jack on, linking to the text 'The 50 best British albums as voted by you!'. This pug also shows personal language, addressing the audience directly, involving them.

Preliminary task

This is my school magazine cover that I have created in today’s lesson, I was made to start again after a problem logging in with the apple macs. I am happy with the overall result especially as I am still fairly new to photoshop. Looking back to my mock up that I made before starting, there are a lot of similarities, I have used the same title and layout of the title I originally planned and the same straplines. Things I have changed are the image of the party popper in the bottom, right hand corner, due to no access of the Internet and not taking an original photo of it. I also decided to use a banner going across the page with my kicker on, just because it added more emphasis to the text and added to the magazines theme of celebration.

To improve my magazine front cover more, I would have spent more time experimenting with colours, shapes and fonts to make my magazine cover look more unique and professional. I don’t like the white colour I have used for my straplines, as they are difficult to read against the pale background. Another specific way I would have improved it is by trying to make the outline of the picture neater, and less jagged, I think this is one of the reasons why my magazine does not look as professional as it could.

This is my contents page to go with the front cover for the sixth form magazine. My favourite part of this is the image, I feel it is the most interesting part of the page and the people look happy and inviting.  To show a relation between my contents and front page I have used the same blue colour as the background, same font and  colour scheme. I think this can be much improved, I has to complete it in a very small time period. The page looks very bare and simple, and i would improve it by adding more text and interesting features to the page, such as auto shapes and perhaps a few more pictures.