Textual analysis 1 Rolling Stone

Textual analysis of Rolling Stone magazine

From the cove of this magazine you can tell you are meant to feel bad for the celebrity. One of the main reasons is because of the way Robert Downey Jr looks very unkempt and rough in an orange hoodie as you wouldn’t normally see him in such casual clothing for a photo shoot. Another reason is his facial expression, he is looking directly at the camera and doesn’t look like he is posing at all for the picture. The model is also not smiling at the camera but he also isn’t frowning or making any facial expressions at all, you could say he looks quite spaced out with the glazed over eyes. The final point is the cover line ‘To hell and back with Robert Downey Jr’ which tells the reader that he has been through a rough patch or is struggling to handle something. This can be related back to the image and explain why he looks so rough and unkempt.

The main image of the celebrity is make to stand out a lot on this issue of the magazine, we can see this by the way the cover line and branding don’t cover much of the main image, this shows that the image and the story about the picture is obviously quite big and needs to stand out. The other main reason the image stands out so much is the colour scheme used around the picture, all of the text and even the masthead are done in either black or white and contrast the orange of the image in a huge way, this leads back to the point that the image is meant to be the most important part of the magazine cover.

This particular magazine is aimed at younger people interested in the rock ‘n’ roll genre of music portrayed by the magazine. The cover lines are about politics and murders which would not appeal to very young people as they wouldn’t normally be interested in. This is why the target audience is probably around the age of 25+ as they would be more interested in the issues mentioned by the cover lines. The other reason the target audience might be older is because of the price of the magazine, £3:50 is quite a bit of money for a younger person to spend on a weekly magazine, for that reason we reader might be older that 12+ so they would be working to earn money.

The fonts used on the cover are very bold and stand out a lot from most other magazines to make them stand out and easy to read, this is probably so that shoppers can quickly and easily skim the cover lines so they can see if they are interested in the articles in the magazine. This is also so that the different cover lines stand out on their own and don’t just blend in together. The other reason the cover lines stand out is because the background of the image is white which makes the image and the text stand out a lot from the blank white background.

To conclude I think this magazine cover is very powerful and works quite well at attracting the eye of the reader. It is also good because you can easily see what articles are mentioned in the issue before you buy it. The magazine reaches out to its target audience very well with the articles inside and the cover image. Overall this cover is well designed and works very well.