Textual analysis of 2 music magazines

The magazine Mixmag focuses on various sub genres of dance music, usually house and trance. Mixmag is aimed at 17-23 year old males. The fonts on this front cover are smooth and well rounded, and are either white and bold, or yellow and small. This gives the magazine a clean look, and clearly indicates the importance of the indicual pieces of text to the reader. The masthead is not on any separate banner, and is placed over the photo. The tagline "The world's biggest dance music and clubbing magazine" is clearly shown emphasizing it's popularity. The logo has not been overlapped by anything other than Guy Manuel's  mask, suggesting that this logo is important. The music magazine uses the triad colour scheme of pink, blue and yellow, which is carried over between their issues, creating a brand identity and image. Unlike many other music magazines, only one image is shown, which leaves the magazine looking uncluttered. The photo is placed over bright blue sky, representative of locations such as Ibiza that are closely related to the clubbing scene.

Kerrang is a music magazine that focuses on rock music. Kerrang is aimed at 13-20 year old males. The magazine also has other avenues to reach it's audience, for example Kerrang radio and the Kerrang music channel, adding to the overall brand image. The kerrang logo is distorted, with a smash effect, representative of the rebellious nature of rock music. The logo has been place at the back, with images over it, as the image has already become instantly recognizable without the entire image through the brand. The front cover contains a wide variety of font sizes and colours, making it look 'messy', to fit with the genre of rock. Multiple images are used, with the Slipknot memory lane picture over the top of the green day image. The masthead talks about festivals, giving information on this, and is not a tagline. The use of words like "Plus" and "WTF" make certain sections of text stand out to it's audience. The colour scheme is blue, green and yellow.