Research: Kerrang magazine front cover analysis

The next other well-known music magazine I've chosen to look at is Kerrang. This is a rock/indie magazine. Many of their front covers seem to be rather cluttered as shown by the four magazine front covers I have chosen to look at. Personally I find this fact very distracting and it can make it a little hard to pick out the features on the front cover whether that’s the main artist, their name or any of the other articles or artists featuring in the magazine. The pictures on the front cover tend to be head and shoulder close up shots or full body from the knees up. This second shot seems to be used to allow the reader to either see an action that the artist or artists are doing, for example playing a musical instrument or looking ‘bad ass’. This front cover image is key to drawing the reader in and can be the make or break on whether a customer buys a magazine or not. Each of these front covers also carries a colour scheme, which stops the page from getting too complicated, and allows key features to stand out more than less important ones. For example on the front cover with green day the colour scheme is green white and yellow coupled with black as a general colour to allow fro less important text. On the front cover with Enter Shikari the colour scheme is the same as the union flag with red, white and blue. This links in with the cover photo of the three artists in the band with two of them draped in the union flag. The green day cover and the union flag one also feature some of their more important piece of writing with boxes around them. “Cool Britannia enter Shikari bring me the horizon you me at six invade the warped tour” is backgrounded by different colored boxes, this helps the text to stand out more as it is deemed more important and is the main feature story for this edition. Each front cover also has a banner at the bottom with less important articles and artists advertised. Each front cover has a small circle or starburst with something free advertised on it whether that be a free download or poster inside. These also attract readers because they feel that as well as getting the magazine they have paid for they get given something extra and so it’s more worth buying that magazine. Overall I think that although the Kerrang front covers look good and interesting they are also a bit too cluttered and this can make it hard for the reader to see which are the most important bits they might want to read.