Analysis of two front covers

I chose two currently very well-known music magazines, ‘Kerrang!’ and ‘NME’.  The front pages of both magazines feature Green Day’s ‘Billy Joe’. I have done this purposefully to highlight which different ways he is used to advertise. Green day are an American punk rock band formed in 1987, and have had many hits. Looking at these two magazines you can instantly notice the colours used create contrasting moods. Kerrang! Have chosen a darker outlook on green day dressing him all in black with an electric guitar slung across his shoulders is typical rock poise.  Green, yellow and white are the three main colours used other than black to highlight importance where-as softer whites against a harsh red is the combination used by NME. The body language in NME’s cover shows rebellion and freewill. By exposing his wrists ads and edgier effect to this softer attempt of a music magazine cover.  Reading around the mid shot of Billy on NMEs front page you can see articles about Muse, Artic Monkeys and the big sub heading ‘Inside the mind of Billy Joe’.On the front of Kerrang! You can clearly read ‘exclusive’ U.S reports and mind grabbing subtitles like ‘WTF?! –Harry Potter joins Gallows’. Words like plus and win are also used to grab people’s attention.

I personally think Kerrang takes advantage of an extra page to advertise and shoves everything on the front cover compared to the empty cover of NME. I think NME don’t need to publicise as much as they star on television with the ‘NME awards’.  On this particular issue of Kerrang! There are three images which all descend in size and importance. One main midshot of Billy Joe himself, sat close by is a subheading and boxed photo of slipknot with the words ‘Memory lane’.

Analysing the fonts of both magazines you can see the difference in textures. Kerrang! Have used crumbled/ eroded font to add edge and personality to this cover and the size of text varies, NME have use bold shadowed text all fairly large/ similar sized. Both backdrops are a base colour which lightens around the main image of Billy Joe, making him the dominant feature.

You can see Billy Joe is used in two ways on these magazines, NME have him posed in a humorous way, whereas Kerrang have captured him more naturally, hot and sweaty at work hair all curly relaxed but focused.