Denotation:
The magazine cover consists of a colour photograph of a man looking downwards from the camera showing no eye contact. It is a mid-shot, showing his head, shoulders and chest. The background of the photograph is light grey at the top but gradually becomes lighter and is white at the bottom. The photograph covers the whole of the magazine cover and in front the photographed man is the Rolling Stone masthead and in front of him five separate cover lines in white and black, all cover lines are separated by a yellow bar beneath each other. The photographed man’s name is in black and white and is in the second largest font size. A bar code is visible in the bottom right corner.
Masthead:
Rolling stone’s masthead is very distinctive: Yellow with a white outline and a royal blue drop shadow. The font used is a serif font, and after the first letter of each word, the lower case letters join up to each other. The font used is similar to the famous ‘Coca Cola’ writing and resembles American culture.
Character:
The cover photograph is of the successful American rapper/ singer ‘Lil Wayne’ born 27 /09/1982. Lil Wayne is a well known rapper worldwide in his genre of hip hop and is known as a dominant figure of the hip hop industry that is signed to Young Money Cash Money and Universal Republic.
Composition:
He is posed in a very relaxed kind of way and looks as if he could be sitting down but it is not visible. His pose, body language, lack of clothes and lack of eye contact shows him being very relaxed and a rebellious lack of interest.
Costume: Due to the shot being a mid-shot you can only see up to his chest and he is not wearing any clothing showing his bear skin and his large amount of tattoos. NVC: His non verbal communication also resembles his rebellious lack of interest with his mouth closed and slightly leaned to the right. Lighting: The lighting is high key, as the photograph is meant to resemble daytime. Setting: There is no sense of setting within the front cover of the magazine.
Cover-lines:
The main cover line that relates to his photograph says: “Lil Wayne goes rock, rap genius changes his game.” This is making reference to Lil Wayne starting to enter the rock game making new singles such as “let it rock” ft Kevin Rudolf and his Rebirth album was promoted as Wayne’s rock music debut. The album debuted at number two on the U.S. Billboard 200 chart, selling 176,000 copies in its first week. It became Wayne's seventh top-ten album in the United States and produced four singles that attained Billboard chart success. Upon its release, Rebirth received generally negative reviews from most music critics. It has been certified gold in sales by the Recording Industry Association of America, with domestic shipment of 500,000 copies. The different cover-lines tell us that this magazine does not concentrate on just one genre of music, but is diverse in what it chooses to write about. Artists mentioned on the cover lines include Lil Wayne, Prince, The Allman brothers and kris Kristofferson. The only person mentioned but is not a musician is Ethan Hawke who is an American actor. All cover-lines use a serif font, connoting tradition.
Target Audience:
Considering all of these points, the likely target audience would be people male or female aged between 35-55 years old. They would have a good knowledge of popular culture and a definite interest in a wide range of musical styles and the music industry generally. I would also feel that this single issue could also be made to draw the interest of the younger generation and that is why they may have chosen to use Lil Wayne to appear on the front cover due to they will have more knowledge on him compared to the older generation.
No comments:
Post a Comment