3) Analysing a magazine

The music genre of this magazine is R&B/Hip Hop.

The target audience is mainly teenagers and young adults in their early 20s. You can tell this from the main image and the colours used, e.g. black which is edgy and cool.

The main image is of two famous singers, Nicki Minaj and Drake.

This image relates to the music genre because they are R&B/Hip Hop stars, which is the genre of the magazine itself.

The image is framed in the centre, and has been taken mid-shot eye level, however Drake is standing straight towards the camera, whereas Nicki Minaj is standing at an angle, giving the image more depth and making it look edgy.

We can only see the top half, the bottom half has been cut off so we focus more on the main image itself instead of including unnecessary parts of the image.

In the main image, Nicki Minaj is wearing a corset top, blonde wig, a lot of jewellery and a leopard print coat, off the shoulder to show her tattoo on her arm. Drake is wearing a camouflage jacket with a white top, jeans and a necklace. Nicki Minaj is portraying a rather provocative look, whereas Drake is more casual. However, the two outfits being worn contrast together making the image effective.

The colours that have been used are dark colours for the image such as black, camouflage green, etc. however for the kicker, it is in big bold red font and the strap-lines are in white. The red and white colours contrast with the dark black background, making them stand out. They contribute to the mood of the image because from the title ‘DOMINATION’, we see that this could be a serious, informative story so the colours may need to be mature and standard.

The image relates to the target audience because they are both fairly new singers, and they have become popular with teenagers and young adults in their 20s very quickly. However, people in their thirties may not have heard of them as yet or their music may not appeal to all ages apart from the target audience, which are mainly teenagers.

The magazine is called ‘XXL’. This reflects the content and target audience for the magazine because ‘XXL’ means extra, extra large, suggesting that their may be a lot of interesting information in the magazine and a lot more popular artists in there such as Lil Wayne, etc.

The typeface that has been used is simply red for the kicker and the background of the masthead, and white for the strap-lines and the sub-heading. This is effective because we have all the dark colours from the main image and background, so the red and white brighten it up a little bit and lets us focus more on the writing and what else the magazine contains.

The masthead has been placed in the top left hand corner in big white font with a red background, and a minority of it is being covered by Nicki Minaj’s hair, suggesting that it is a very popular, well known magazine. The kicker is at the bottom, in the middle and is written in white font; however the big bold red ‘DOMINATION’ gives us a sense of control and what the magazine is mainly about. The strap-lines are coming down vertically from the top right hand corner in white writing, and are important because they tell us the other contents of the magazine, rather than just Nicki Minaj and Drake. The texts have been placed in corners and at the bottom, to make us focus on the main image and attract us to what the main subject is.