Magazine cover analysis

Analysis of magazine covers

These are two different magazines in the genre of Rap/ Hip-hop. The common conventions in Rap and Hip-hop magazines are tough, gangster looking music artists. Lots of jewellery shows that they’re rich and can wear what they like. This appearance shows they have a lot of power.

I choose to talk about these two covers because they are definitely all the opposites of the conventional Rap and Hip-Hop covers. The cover on the right shows a well-known music artist ‘Kanye West’. However he is not shown covered in ‘Bling’ as rapper usually are. His facial expression is also quite sad and this seems to make us think that he is not as tough and powerful as all rappers seem. His beard has some grey hairs and this makes him seem old. This is the total opposite of a stereotypically gangster rapper.

The second magazine also challenges conventions and it does this by putting a beautiful woman on the cover with revealing clothing. This magazine is uses sex as a selling point. As I said before, the stereotypically rapper is covered in jewellery and must look tough. This is such and opposite and I believe these challenging conventions are used to grab your attention.

However there are many conventions to do with the layout of the magazines, which is kept the same. The fonts are usually thick bold writing. This shows strong wording and a macho style layout. This style of writing is usually associated with Rap and Hip-hop.

The magazine on the right has its masthead covered. This shows that the magazine is well known and people know what magazine it is without actually reading the masthead. The left third of the magazine is where you attention is drawn to on cover. Having an eye on the left third really increases the focus on a person. In both magazines there are eyes in the left third and this allows us to focus on the images, which will make want to buy the magazine, it seems more interesting. Having lots of writing here can be boring and this will result less people wanting to buy the magazine meaning fewer sales for the magazine.

The layout for both magazines is quite similar. There is a famous person on both who cover almost the entire length of the cover. The cover on the right uses a close up. The reason for this is that it shows the effects, which have been used on the artist. This include, grey hair in his beard, messy hair and his eyes are slightly closed showing he could be tired and stressed. The corresponding story for this image is ‘ The truth hurts’. This could suggest that he is dealing with hard news and has let him self-go. He doesn’t care about his appearance. This is what the image portrait. Although this challenges conventions of Rap and Hip-hop magazines it could also show a convention that rappers are so tough that they do not care what people think about them.

The cover on the left uses a long shot. The reason for this is similar to the cover on the right. It is used to focus on the person, again a famous singer. However, the reason a long shot is used instead of a close up is the focus is on the body of the singer. The shot type was selected to show the singer in revealing clothes. The purpose for this is to engage readers and use sex as a selling point.

The cover lines are on the edges of the page. This means there is more space for the image. The image is the main aspect of a cover as this is what grabs the reader’s attentions. It is important that the images are not covered or covered as little as possible to make it more interesting.

The mis en scene used in both these magazines is very unique as far a Rap and Hip-hop magazines go. The magazine on the right seems to go against well-known stereotypes for rappers. We cannot see all of him but we can see his face and judging by this we can see he is very different from other rappers. He seems very depressed and the grey hairs in his beard make him seem old. Rappers are not old at all and this makes him instantly seem like the opposite of a rapper.

The woman in the cover of the magazine on the right is wearing revealing clothes and this makes her seem like a ‘sex object’. This could be used for many things, either that she is being used to interest readers and make them want to buy the magazine. The other way it could be used is to show the opposite of stereotypical rappers. The woman on the front is actually a rapper as well.