I have deconstructed and decoded a music magazine front cover from Rolling Stones. I have connotated and annotated:
- Images
- The language
- The headlines
- The coverlines
- The colours
- The typefaces
I started by thinking and researching the magazine company to find the mission statement. The mission statement is what the magazine want to accompolish with every new page, title and new magazine article.
Every magazine has audience demographics and psycographics, demographics is parts of the magazine you cant change the permanent conventions. For my magazine the demographics are:
- Age
- Income
- middle aged men
- men wanting to re-live their youth
Psycographics are the type of group of people for example for the Rolling Stone magazine I catograrised it into succeeders which are ‘more money than aspirers, dont need to show it’. However by the fact that the Rolling Stone have used a new modern pop star on the front of the cover, this could change their target auidience as Harry Styles target audience are teenage girls.
Howver even in the groups you will have audience segmentation as you can break down your audience into more specific catogries basewd on many different ages and interests.
The masthead font is serif font and stands out against the plae white and blue background. This infers a older audience as serif font is mainly coordinated with a older audience as it is classy and bold. The textual design conventions add more about the magazine cover as it recognises the form and makes it easier for the audience to understand what the media is. Without the masthead with the serif font or without a main star it would be hard for the audience to recognise the magazine meaning the audience would be pleased and would feel let down.
By gaining this knowlege I now understand that in order to create a succesful magazine that will need to target my audience appropriately and use the correct physcographics and demographics.