Textual analysis of Rolling Stones

Textual analysis of Rolling Stones

I am going to be analysing the front cover of the rolling stones magazine. There are many things to look at when analysing a magazine cover firstly the Layout, the colour, the target audience and the main image.

Firstly, the layout, the cover has the mast head running across the top of the page; this means regular customers will see the magazines title straight away. The main cover line is also at the top of the page as this will be the first story the publishers of the magazine will want to the audience to see. The other cover lines are all in on one side of the page this makes for a much organised and very formal.

The target audience of this magazine can be deciphered by looking at all of the things that make up the front cover. For example, as mentioned before the layout of the text and main image is important. In the case of this magazine the well organised cover lines all on one side in a neat list suggest that this magazine is for an older more mature target audience. The main image is a close of Adele’s face, who is a singer whose music appeals to all ages meaning this image will cause the magazine to catch the eyes of people of all ages.

The close up of Adele shows her pouting this and looking at the camera this gives the magazine a friendly and flirtatious feel to it. The pose she is pulling also reflects Adele’s type of music which often involves love between her and her ex partners. Adele is a pop/soul artist which means that this main image will help to encourage people of who like this genre of music to buy the magazine.

This magazine has used its cover lines in a way in which they show the main part of the story in white and a bit of background information in yellow. For example ‘The triumph of Adele’ is one of the main cover lines on this page. Adele is in big bold writing, this is obviously to draw attention to her name and the writing is in white because she is the main point in this story. ‘The triumph’ is written in yellow this is because it is just giving you a rough idea as to what this article is about but it is not as vital as Adele’s name so it is smaller and in a more discrete colour.

Obviously the artist or the song names are deemed most important and the thing the writers want the audience to read first, to try and capture their attention. As well as this the cover lines are no larger than 6 words meaning they are easy to read at a quick glance meaning the target audience will see be able to read them without even intending to, causing people to get drawn into buying the magazine they originally had no intention of purchasing.

The overall style of this magazine is quite formal and mature, which will appeal to an older audience. Although because of the subject topics in the cover lines and the model in the main image, it will still attract a younger audience as well. So this means that it has a wide audience range. The front page is quite neat and there isn’t a lot of text covering the page, although the main image is large and is a very close up shot, this means the cover can look quite busy, but I think this works well along its well organised format.