Curtis Rutherford Media A Level Coursework: November 2013

NME Magazine

The Cover Page:
The title of the magazine is NME, this is an acronym for "New Music Express". This title gives the impression that the magazine contains up to date news about current music acts. It also suggests that the favoured music genre is "New Wave" or "Indie" music. The logo is 'NME' in big bold red letters, in a sans serif font. This is a simple design that catches the eye, as the colour red stands out on the page.

The image focuses on the three band members of 'The Wombats', with their frontman standing in the centre of the image with a serious facial expression. The other two band members have more playful facial expressions and are more energetic in the scene. Two of the people in the scene are gazing directly into the camera and the general feel of the body language is that it is quite playful. The three of them are wearing separate types of clothing, one wearing a top, one a hoodie and one wearing a checked shirt. This image shows the ideal of a ranged musical taste, which is the general expectation of the magazine's target audience.

Other images on the cover are of different bands that are undergoing changes.

This image is of Damon Albarn, the lead singer of Blur, who had just broken up.

This image is of The Cribs after they added Johnny Marr to their roster.

The cover lines mostly promote which bands are involved in the articles inside the magazine but also advertise the key topics of the main articles, the key cover lines being "The Wombats - Why Britain's gone silly for the lords of the indie dancefloor"

The colours on the front page are all very vibrant (red, yellow and blue) to assign importance to headlines and important articles. The article for Blur breaking up is "Blur RIP" which gives the reader an emotional response as they associate the band breaking up with a funeral, a sad occasion. The magazine looks similar to others in its layout as the logo is in the top left corner, with articles placed around the border of the main image. This creates a sense of familiarity for the reader so they are more inclined to pick it up.

The Inside

As we can see from the contents page, there is around 66 pages in this issue of the magazine. The colour scheme of the contents page is a lot more basic than the cover page, as it uses mainly black and white, except for in the photos and the advertisement for a subscription. This could be for two reasons, the first is that the NME is targeted at a wide range of music tastes, so they choose not to use colours to attract one target audience as it may drive others away, this instead allows for the content of the page to speak for itself. Also, the only other design colour on the page is the red in the advertisement, which could be to attract attention to the advertisement as it is more noticeable this way.

The advertisements in the magazine take up around 10 pages worth of space and are spread out across the magazine. They advertise Men's shaving equipment, deodorant, clothing shops, album releases and concerts/tours. The reason these are the things advertised is that they are all products that the target audience of the magazine will be looking for, so they are more likely to take an interest in the advertisements.

One of the adverts for an album release, which takes up an entire page to itself, to show its importance.

There are 6 double page spreads in the magazine and they all involve interviews with the subject of the article or at least one member of the band being analysed. The general colour scheme is once again ignored, as each band has its own individual target audience. The feel to the double page spread articles is that it's a somewhat intimate discussion with the artist and they tend to cover even quite dark areas of the artists' lives.