Analysing a magazine cover

The magazine I am analysing seems to be a mixture of both music and gossip. I know it is a music magazine because the main title at the top is Hip-Hop, a genre of music but I also know it contains gossip because the letters in yellow font are gossip and it reminds me of other gossip magazines on the market. Including the puffs on the right side of the cover, it makes me think this magazine mixes together popular musicians with gossip about them.


The target audience for this magazine seems to be young, mainly black people who like hip-hop. I say this because the majority of the people on the cover are black and are idols to alot of young black people. The age-group of the people who would read this would be 14-25 year olds because the people on the cover are also young so you they can feel similar to them.


The whole purpose of this front cover is to make the audience want to buy it and read it. This cover uses different techniques to achieve this. Firstly, The main two people on the cover, who we both got mid shots of are soulja boy and kat, who are both well- known celebrities, so the audience will want to find out why both their pictures are side by side and what is there connection, plus the yellow writing and bullet points give the audience a little taste of the gossip about them and makes them want to find out more and buy the magazine.


The puffs on the side also make the audience want to read the magazine because it tells us only a small bit of really juicy gossip, so it leaves you wanting to find out more. For example, the puff about Timbaland says 'Attempts suicide after robbery !?' This is a very clever way of making the reader want to find out more because the question mark makes you want to find out if that really amazing piece of information is true or not.


The part at the bottom of the magazine says plus inside and gives the names of various well known hip hop musicians. This makes you want to find out why these various people are in that edition of the magazine and what exclusive interviews or information the magazine has on them.