Research/ case studies of real music magazines : CLASH

Research / case studies of real music magazines: Clash

Textual analysis of CLASH

Images:

 The front cover of CLASH was very creative as it shows  2 images of musicians from the same group ‘Overshadowed’ have been to create this piece of art as the front cover. The front cover is of a women and a man. The 2 images been taken have been separated almost ripped apart. For me, the wide eyes of the women are eye catching as they are right below the masthead.

 Her makeup for the eye was used on purpose as the silver metallic eyeliner is dramatic and strong even though she’s looking towards the right and not towards the camera; it still makes an effect to me as an audience. Also the mascara creates that dramatic effect making her eye lashes long makes her eyes stand out even more. I also noticed that lipstick was used, the colour used was red. Red makes her look more seductive you can also tell that her mouth was slightly open showing a bit of her teeth which makes the magazine sexy.

Props used on the women that I noticed were jewellery used on the head and above her mouth to the far end.  The jewellery were shown in the cover 3 times but the main one would have to be the one place on her head as the light is reflecting towards the jewel making it appear more. Also as it’s clear yet diamond like, it links towards her eyes being silver and metallic like. The lighting of the images in the front cover was not too dark.

In CLASH, there were 2 contents pages, in both contents pages they used 3 images from different features such as fashion, cover stories, interviews and news.  The 3 images all use a low lighting as the main cover line is ‘Overshadowed’ the contents pages keep to that theme of showing shadows in black and white images. The main cover line image uses shadows as the image of the person is from the front cover (DJ Shadowed).  I noticed that all 3 images on the contents pages are in order from smallest to biggest. This is used because the images number pages are different such as the first image is on page 58. They put the image first as it’s before any of the other images in the magazine.

 

 

In the double page spread, the first image is a drawing of a TV presenter. I firstly thought that it was unusual to use a drawing of the main person of the article as it is usually a picture/photo shoot. As the drawing is very similar to the actual presenter the article is still a success and different in using it as evidence of the presenter. The drawing is in black and white linking back to the shadow.  The surroundings of the drawing are also white which makes it look dull and plain. The article also uses yet again another drawing of a game instead of using an actual image of the object. However the use of colour in this drawing makes the article stand out as it uses primary colour such as red, blue. The last image on the double page spread is of a musician (Zac Brown). This time, the magazine has used an actual image of the person. Even though, the article on the musician is about food (barbecues), they’ve decided to use an image of the person holding a guitar. They’ve zoomed the image and blurred the people in the background to focus it o him and the flag of America is also on focus to create that powerful and dramatic effect.

Conventions of page layout:

The masthead in the front cover was CLASH. The masthead was bold and wide for the audience to be hooked towards. The colour of the masthead was soft orange suiting the image on the cover which was also a soft orange. 

 I think that all the features used in the front cover all linked to the masthead. Firstly, the cover was ripped this links to the masthead as the word clash is similar to slay, tare and destroy. This shows that the cover image was purposely designed that way to connect it to the masthead.

The masthead also linked towards the image of the girl. As, in the image I noticed that the girls eyelashes were extremely long. Her eyelashes were made to look like that because, in the masthead by removing the letter ‘C’ it would form ‘LASH’.  The main cover line was ‘Overshadowed’.  This was also a soft orange colour. The font style was different from the masthead. The font style was quite the Arial Narrow meets Bodoni MT Poster Compressed. This was purposely placed below the chin of the DJ in the front cover because; there is a shadow in the image below the chin. This links to the main cover line shadow. The teaser in the front cover of the magazine is the phrase “Not another DJ Shadow Interview”.  This is because it addresses the audience that yet again they have another interview with the amazing DJ Shadow. It’s also sarcastic saying not another interview makes the audience shocked and surprised.

Masthead in the contents page is ‘Contents’. This is used to draw readers on where the contents page. The main cover lines are Features, Fashion and Regulars. These are all used in the same font style as the main cover line in the front cover. However the colour used is black as the colour scheme in the contents page is black and white. Teasers are used throughout the entire contents page For instance they include; pull quotes from interview, images. They use 3 images in the contents page for the reader to see what things will be in the features. Such as, image of fashion model above the image writes down the page number.

In the double page spread, they’ve used a textbox above the masthead of the article (Private Passions). They’ve used this textbox to write clear summary simply to tell the reader what the article is about. The textbox makes it stand out as it is in white bold square and the text is white also.

Language:

The tone in the language was not too formal as it had inappropriate words used. On the other hand, in the interviews the tone was very formal indeed.  The structure was much organised, everything was placed in the right order for instance in the interviews it would open with the correct subject and end perfectly.

The genre of music was varied as it included artists of reggae, rock, electric, classic and rap. Also, other genres than music are also portrayed in the magazine such as; TV presenters, sportsmen (sufers), fashion mixtapes etc.

Audience and Institution:

Above shows the readings of CLASH magazines audience. It shows that the majority of men buy CLASH magazine. This is by 55% of men buy and read the magazine however 10% less whom buy and read CLASH are female. It also shows that the target audience is in the average age of 28 showing that adults in early 30s would read CLASH magazine. 

 

The statistics have been really helpful as it has shown me an understanding of the magazine. From the language and features this magazine uses links to the age group of the people whom buy CLASH.

 The  image  beside is of the statistics and fact show the percentage of age groups whom buy and read CLASH from 2011. It still shows the majority of people whom buy the magazine are over 20 and are mostly men.

CLASH magazine is published 10 times a year by Music Republic Ltd. CLASH also launched a smartphone which had went on to win ‘Best Music Magazine’ at the Digital Magazine Awards for their IOS Apple Magazine App.