AOB 3-NME analysis

I am looking at two front covers from the music magazine NME. The cover on the left dates back to the 1960’s and the one on the right are from 2011. The name of the magazine is so well known to its fans that some of it is being obscured. Both these are targeted at the same young person audience and are trying to get across what music/artistes are included in the magazine and so appeal to the audience.

 The new NME magazine has a very controversial image of lady ga ga on the front wearing a see-through all-in-one sheath type outfit. This is something that would never have been allowed in the 60’s. The magazine also has swearing and a play on words with the ‘unzipped’ and the fact she is wearing a suit with zips on. Again something back in 1960’s they would never have had. Both of these magazines are targeted at music lovers aged 14-30 year old. 

The new magazines appeals to this audience as it has harsh, bright, modern looking colours and all the artistes named on the front cover along with the close-up shot of Lady ga ga all target younger music fans. The mode of address is very blunt, harsh and uses the kind of language that is spoken in everyday conversation amongst young people. The audience aspirations for this magazine are that young women might want to be like lady ga ga e.g. to have a body like her, to be a singer, to be as eccentric as her or as controversial.  There are numerous cover lines on the front cover promising various information on bands, such as Artic Monkeys and so enticing the music lover to buy the magazine. The main cover line promises, so it seems, to let the reader know all the juicy gossip about the main image (Lady Ga Ga).  The recent NME magazine puts across a quite raunchy, sexy and slightly aggressive message, one that says, just be yourself and stick by what you believe.  Reader profile for NME is Male, average age of 23 years. They are obsessed with music and also watch a lot of films. Around half of the readers are students who no doubt spend much of their time either reading it or discussing the content with their peers. The front of the new NME magazine follows the conventions of it’s type. The masthead is bold, bright and so well known by its fans that the full masthead does not necessarily have to be in full view.  The typeface is very modern and easy to read with a mix of black, white and blue for the colours.

The old cover is again aimed at the same audience of 14-30 year old. You can tell as the cover has big bold text and funny headlines that, I think, would appear at the time to this audience. The mode of address this cover gives is again of harsh and humours language like ‘I GO CRAZY’. The audience aprisarts are that young people may aspirer to be like the people on the front. To be able to sing like they do and be famous. There are several cover lines for what the magazines will have inside. This old NME cover gives across the idea of cut out faces that people in music are posh and wear suits. The typeface the mastheads have is of a big bold heading on a black background in the top left corner the same place as the other one. The paper have no real photography just images of cut out heads with little technology  around in those days this is all you can expect. The cover is laid out with the text next to the images and the images scatted nicely around the paper.

Although there are many differences in these magazines like the colour, the images, text used and the fact one is more of a magazine then the other. There are also a few similarities these include the masthead being in the same place. Also the biggest text is in the bottom medium on each.