Comparitive analysis and evaluation of music press front page

Front covers of magazines are one of the main features of a magazine that attracts their target audience. The colours, images, fonts, layout and styles can combine to create a specific tone and theme of a magazines front cover. 

Kerrang

The colours included on Kerrang magazine of black, white, red and grey all combine to create a gothic tone, which is clearly unfreindly and dark. These colours also create a bleak effect and reflect the colour of clothes worn by many rock artists featured in Kerrang and its followers. The combination of the colours and the images often used in Kerrang can also create an aggressive feel. For example, the image of a man in a mask with the red splats on the front page connote violence, as the mask aims to look intimidating and weird, and the red splats could be seen as blood.

The fonts used on Kerrang, like the smashed masthead, suggest action and thrills that come with the magazine and its music scene. The front covers fonts mainly consist of unclean, stenciled or hand written. This suggests the magazine and its culture are rough and implys rebbellion against the mainstream of society. 

The layout of Kerrang places the features of the issue on the bottom leaving the top half image with lots of space to attract attention. This means the face on the front stands out more and seem more important, meaning the reader is drawn to the image and wants to know what it means.

The Kerrang magazines front page uses a dark style by a lack of colour, and serious facial expressions. The  words on the front page also create an aggressive feel eg. 'somebodys gonna get killed...' this suggests violence and straight away shows us that the target audience are against the mainstream of society.

Top of the pops

However, the colours included on the cover of Top of the Pops magazine are purple, pink, yellow and white. These are all bright, happy colours which immediately suggest to the reader it is a young girls magazine. The colours also have a sparkly, glossy effect showing the magazine will be celebrity based gossip and not serious.

The images on the front of Top of the Pops show smiley, happy young people involved in popular culture. This means the target audience are likely to know who they are and are followers. Their facial expressions are welcoming, meaning the audience feel comfortable and would wish to read on.

         The fonts used on the front page of Top of the Pops are clean and modern. This works better
         than a rough font for the magazine because the readers, young teenage girls, would be aspiring
         for a fairytale lifestyle where everything is perfectly done.

         The layout of Top of the Pops involves many small images over one main image. This attracts the
         target audience as they are pulled into the images shown with the smaller stories as well as the big
         ones on the front page. The people featured on the front overlap the masthead, highlighting their
         importance.
                                                                                                                                                                           Similarities                                                    Diffences
       Both magazine have the masthead                   The colours used on Kerrang are much darker than
       at the top of the page.                                     those on Top of the Pops.

       Both magazines have central images                The images and facial expressions highly contrast.
       aimed to attract their target audience.              Top of the Pops shows people smiling and looking
                                                                             happy wheras Kerrang will show more intimidating
                                                                             facial expressions.