The first magazine i am going to analyse is Metal Hammer.
Genre
This text covers both traditional and contemporary metal bands, hardcore, Gothic rock and punk. Some similar magazines are Kerrang, Total Guitar and Meltdown. The genres of music that are represented are mainly Gothic rock and Heavy Metal due to the idea of the colours dark grey and red, the grey to represent metal and red to represent blood. Musical genres such as Pop, RnB, Dance, Classical or Jazz are not represented, you can see this due to colours, pictures and conventions on the magazine.
Media Language
There are seven elements to the media language which are Fonts, Size, colours, Photos, Styles, Stars and Gender. The font used is quite a bold, strong font which represents the idea of 'Metal' Hammer but in the title the word 'metal' is not the same font as the rest of the title it looks like a stamp print effect which is on a slant. For the text that reads 'Iron Maiden, these colours don't run' it is a similar font to the title but it looks almost like it's trying to look more of a curvier font but because of the idea of 'Metal' it can't because iron is seen as hard to bend.
The title of course is the largest text so that it stands out to the audience of what the magazine is called other fonts such as the Plug along the top 'Free DVD and CD!' and 'Iron Maiden, these colours don't run' are in a slightly smaller font but not dramatically different front the title, they are still easy to read and notice.
There appears to be only red, yellow, grey and black colours used.The grey and the black are dark colours so this represents the darkness and Gothicness of the magazine. I think the idea of the yellow font is to make particular words stands out such as 'Free' and the plug on the left side. Finally the idea of the red font i think is to represented blood which is seen as Gothic, red can represent other types of feelings such as love but i think in this case of the idea of it being Gothic it represents blood.
The photo on the cover appears to be a skull wearing an army hat, with two guns in front of it, also behind this skull there are what looks like bullet holes where the guns may have been aim at. I think the style of the photo comes across quite scary and threatening but also Gothic as it is a skull which relates to death.
There are no Stars used on the cover so this does show that it is not clear what Bands or Singers will appear inside of the magazine and due to there begin no Stars no genders are used so it doesn't show who would buy this but maybe the idea of there being no genders being shown is to show it doesn't matter whether you are male or female you can get this magazine.
The Title is along the top of the magazine but there is the plug 'Free DVD and CD' above it and the other text 'Iron Maiden, these colours don't run' is along the bottom of the magazine and the picture of the skull with guns is in the middle, centre of attention.
On the cover there is no white space, the picture and background cover the whole page and has text on top. The colours as a whole are used to create darkness which is mainly the grey and black shades. When i first looked at the cover the word 'Hammer' stood out to me the most, i think this is because of the large font and the colour. But then after a while i started to notice the picture more because it's unusual to me. The images and text relate to each other because of the word 'metal' in the title because the guns will be metal and metal is strong and the picture used is a strong effective image.
The idea of the title is to refer to music but think in this case it relates to genres rather than music such as Punk, Gothic Rock and Hardcore. All the genres are related to the title and so is the image of an actual metal hammer tool.
I think that this chosen image comes across with angry feelings, looks like a strong character especially with the guns in front of it, they create the idea of army soldiers who are people who represent our country and to protect which is maybe what the image it trying to portray. This represents the world as a whole to be a protective maybe violent place perhaps the people who buy the magazine feel this way about the world.
Representation
I don't think that overall the magazine represents either men or women but does show that either men or women can purchase the magazine, it doesn't make it clear whats it's target gender is. Due to there being no images of men or women it is hard to show whether there is sexual attraction/orientation and also doesn't show anything about the race of people,although the image is white it doesn't necessarily mean that it's more towards white skinned people.
Ideology
The people that will be interested in this magazine are either males or females who have a particlur interest in music in genres such as Gothic Rock, Punk and Hardcore. It appears to support violence as a whole the guns and army skull represent this and i think that it challenges the idea of protection, happiness and strength.
Institution
I think the person who made this has obviously got an interest in Gothic Rock music otherwise they wouldn't have known how to law out the convetions to look like that style of magazine. The media text makes it money by strongly representing it's target audience so that they want to buy it. The importance of the readers interest is important because if it doesn't appeal to them then they won't want to buy it, which would make the magazine not a very good success. I think that it's views are very independant in the way they are controversal by representing the idea of death, war and soldiers in music. When i looked at other Metal Hammer they had started to have more images of people on there and i think this is to show what bands and music interests the magazine it for.
No comments:
Post a Comment