NME

Masthead

The Style of this magazine corresponds to the music reviewed inside. With the masthead such an iconic symbol for music loves of that genre there is no need for such a big masthead. Even without the musical knowledge of the magazine the colours used make the masthead stand out with bright red colours. With such a clash in colour schemes and the masthead it stands out and disrupts the image of the stylish magazine.

 With it not taking up much room on the cover, it enables the editors to use the extra space to help attract new/existing customers to buy the latest issue of NME. Like Q magazine it only takes up to 15% of the page enabling the magazines name to become more of a logo than a name.

Features

Unlike other important music magazine, NME don’t use general conventions and instead change their use of features around on each magazine.  The features on this magazine are dotted around the page and make them much more noticeable. The features disrupt the average look of a magazine and create a much more interesting take on the average magazine feature layout of all of them on a side.

The feature “Inside the Kaisers Brits Party” offers “Exclusive”. This gives the customer a feeling of secrecy and being the only group of people that know that sort of information. Like Maslow’s hierarchy of need, it gives the audience of the magazine a feeling of belonging. This sense of belonging would incline people to be more willing to buy the magazine because it would mean they’d find out exclusive gossip.

Continuing with the same theme of music as the main cover line the features show the biggest bands in that genre and offer written articles about them inside. The use of colour linking the features to the main cover line straight away shows a link between the bands and makes all the white text seem much more interesting and stands out a lot more compared to the small feature in the bottom left about Fall Out Boy.

Not only is the use of colour important but the size of the font creates a sense of hierarchy within the magazine. The main cover line being the most important and attractive article in the magazine is displayed in the biggest text and in the most obvious place on the cover. With the main cover lines taking up all the space on the page the features beside it are typed in smaller text sizes. The reason for the smaller sizes is to make each feature stand out more than the last one. The size makes the features stand out more and therefore seen by more customers on the shelves of the shop.

With every magazine competing for the customers money the most interesting articles are normally made the most obvious and the features “Arctic Monkeys, Our new favourite band” only help gain customers as they are a well known band with a huge fan base.

Plugs

The plugs in this cover are shown and advertised to the people who listen to the music NME review.  Keen music fans would want to have a poster of their favourite. So to have the chance to pick up free posters inside as well as read a magazine about your favourite music bands it is a win-win situation.

The main plug offering the free posters of bands is right at the top of the page where you’d expect the masthead to be covering. Having the plug directly next to the masthead enables the customer to see the plug straight away after looking at the name of the magazine. The sticker like shape with the words “FREE” also over laps with the masthead as if it’s more important than the name itself.

The text throughout the cover is consistent and stays the same basically for every feature and cover line etc. However for the plug at the top of the page the font is serif in bold. The use of this text gives a feeling of importance and formality. Having the plug written in this font helps give the idea that this offer won’t happen again for a while and you’d have to get these posters now so you don’t miss out.

Like the features the plugs are written in white. This helps give the idea that they are all of the same music and all linked. Not only that but it also keeps the magazine stylish and doesn’t ruin the covers look. With almost all pieces of text using the same colour scheme it helps make all pieces of text stand out.

Main cover line/picture:

With such big named artists such as Morrissey in the magazine having his face on the front cover attracts music fans no matter what.

The picture overlaps the masthead and makes the face stand out. The picture focuses on the guys face and automatically attracts the reader’s eyes to his face. This use of photography enables people to instantly recognise the well-known artist and straight away have a good idea what the main article will be about.

The main cover line isn’t typed in serif, the effect of this is that it makes it less formal and becomes more of a casual read. The fact it is a more casual read than serious reading (e.g. The Financial Times) helps aims towards the target audience lifestyle. In the media kit of NME it is targeted at a lower age and people who either won’t have time to read in detail or don’t want to and instead chose to just catch up on all the music gossip.

With the main cover line is the subtitle giving more information about the article. To make it stand out it’s typed in two different colours and placed right under it so it stands out right next to the main cover line.