Textual analysis 4 KERRANG

Textual analysis of KERRANG magazine

Kerrang is a popular rock ‘n’ roll themed magazine and interviews a lot of famous bands and singer. In this particular issue the cover is dedicated to Green day, a famous rock ‘n’ roll band. Kerrang is aimed at rock ‘n’ roll fans generally aged 14+ over.

The first thing the reader notices about this cover is the main image of Billie Joel as it takes up most of the cover apart from the left third, this is to capture the readers eye and make the cover look very interesting. The image is of the main singer of the band (Billie Joe) pointing at a sign saying ‘GREEN DAY’ followed by ‘answer all your questions’ this tells the reader exactly what they can read about in this issue of the magazine. The main writing on the sign is bigger to stand out more and in red to grab the readers eye, it is also bigger because it is more important than the rest of the sign as it is the band’s name featured in the article.

The next thing on the cover you notice is the masthead, all the wording is in capitals saying ‘KERRANG’ even though the masthead is slightly obscured by the main image you can see that it is meant to look liked cracked glass, maybe symbolising the rebellious nature of the magazine. The fact that it is in capitals could be linked to the fact that the magazine is straight to the point and is a big thing for its readers. As for the colour of the mast head it is a simple yet bold yellow, this is so that the mast head can stand out against most other colours you’d want to use on a magazine cover.

As for the background of the cover it looks very rough and scratched. This makes all the cover lines and images on the cover stand out a lot more than they would against a colourful background. The colour of the background is made to look like rough and destroyed metal; this is so it can look very grimy and destroyed. This goes with the rebellious theme of the cover.

The rest of the cover lines are all in a box of the same yellow as the masthead. This makes the cover look a lot more unified and makes them stand out quite a bit. The writing used is either white or red so that the writing is easy to read against the yellow background of the cover. The rest of the cover is very empty and doesn’t really have anything on it, this is because the main image is quite big for a magazine cover. The big image is very bold but then takes away a bit of detail from the stories that surround other magazines main images. This is a good idea as it makes the magazine quite unique from many others in the same rock ‘n’ roll genre.

To conclude this magazine is very bold and rebellious, I think this is unique from other magazine covers and fit very well with the genre of the magazine. I also like the way the main cover line is included in the main image, I think this is a very unique way to have the main cover line. I especially like the font used for the main cover line as it looks very rushed and like it is painted onto the placard being held by the model (Billie Joe).