Textual analysis 2 NME

Analysis of NME magazine

NME or new musical express is a popular music magazine created and printed in England, the magazine generally focuses on chart music. This is one of the reasons the magazine sells so well as it appeals to a great number of people as the music it writes about is extremely popular. 

The mast head of this magazine is very simple and easy to read, this is quite useful because it is very useful as it is straight to the point. It also allows a reader to find the magazine easily again if they enjoyed it the first time, the boldness of the masthead also helps the magazine to stand out a lot over most other music magazines in a shop. The masthead also fits in to the general colour scheme of the magazine very well, the writing is yellow and the rest of the main writing is written in either red or yellow to make the points stand out against each other.

The main image on this cover is quite unique as the model also appears as the main article in the issue. This allows the reader to know what they can read about in the main article in the magazine before they buy it to see if they are interested. As for the actual image it is of Kurt Cobain a famous musician, he is wearing a hat and glasses as if to cover his face or identity. This could show that he is normally a secretive man but is allowing the magazine a look into his life. The front cover also includes quotes from him saying ‘My lyrics are contradictions. Ill write a few sincere lines then make fun of them’ this extract of the article gives the reader an insight into what he will be talking about in this interview.  

This magazine has a very unique style and looks quite unorganised and neat at the same time. They achieve this look by using very rough and unorganised lettering to get the unorganised or jumbled look on the front cover. For example the cover line is in yellow with the letters all at different heights to one another. This gives the cover a rough and not organised look which looks very good in contrast the rest of the magazine, which is organised and on a grid. The left third of the cover is quite organised and in boxes within boxes. This adds a separation on the cover from the left and the right hand side, this divide is about a third from the left hand side and makes the cover stand out. They use two very opposing colours; this makes the text and the background stand out against each other. This is useful as the magazine will be sold on a shelf with lots of others, so using colours that stand out will help for avid readers to find the magazine.

The popularity of this magazine is based on readers buying the magazine or subscribing for a weekly issue to be sent to them. This helps to keep the magazine popular because it has a weekly amount of buyers. The main reason people subscribe to the magazine is because it is about popular music of the time, this helps to make the magazine popular as thousands of people listen to that sort of music so the magazine will always be read.

To conclude the magazine cover works very well even though it is quite plain. This is because of the powerful imagery used in the main image. This helps to make the image stand out against the background and look more powerful.