Magazine Research-NME cover

   NME magazine was originally launched in 1952 as a music newspaper.Yet throughout the 80's, New Musical Express gradually began to adopt a stereotypical magazine print structure and left its newsprint structure behind in 1988. It was named 'the best selling music newspaper' back in the seventies and still maintains a good reputation today!
    Back when the magazine first started in the 50's and 60's, NME focused mainly on bands which were emerging in the current times such as The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. The magazine also incorporated polls where the readers rate their favourite artists and the winners appeared in a live concert help annually. Towards the end of the 60's, the magazine was designated as a Rock Magazine when they began to cover much more extreme musical themes such as psychedelia. Through these few decades, NME's sales were very healthy and they remained extremely popular.
    The 70's caused NME to reconsider the genre in which they focused upon. Still being printed as a newspaper, NME struggled to keep up with its rivals when covering rock in its truly progressive stages. Through the hiring and firing of several different editors throughout the decades, NME decided on changing its style to a much more cynical and funnier style which gave the magazine a unique selling point against its rivals. Following this, NME later left its newsprint style behind and began to create NME magazine, a current, modern magazine covering a variety of different musical cultures and styles in a similar way.
     Published by ICP media, the magazine is currently being sold weekly for £2.20. Its average readership is around 25300 with a circulation of 32166. The audience for the magazine is majority males aged 17-30 with a demographic of ABC1.
     The magazine attracts it's reader in a variety of ways. The magazine creates an effective synergistic relationship between itself and its technological convergence. The use of a website and radio station allows the reader to be constantly updated and get involved in the magazines competitions which allow the reader to feel fully satisfied with their experiences. The use of live events literally get the reader involved in the reality of the magazine such as rock concerts etc.
      In comparison to Kerrang! magazine, NME appears to have a much more organised and structured cover. This magazine appears to be a lot more mature than Kerrang! despite the fact that they are meant to be of a similar age range. The use of simplistic colours such as black and white create an extremely monotonous tone yet seems to carry an element of maturity and class to it. The use of fiery red and fuscia pink creates an interesting and bold effect as the pair seem to contrast vastly giving certain elements an intense and distinct importance as they stand out against the monotonous black and white tone.
     The contrast between the bleakness of the black and white and the brightness and boldness of the pink almost suggests a sense of rebellion as it contradicts the  monotonous tone and works against it. The may have been done as a cynical way to portray how rebellious rock music can be, especially in music concerts etc.
     The use of fuscia pink also links into the picture as it matches the woman's lipstick almost perfectly automatically implying that the image is representing the headline. The image itself appears to incorporate a variety of different effects and meaning. It appears to use layers as a way of merging the band together which enables the editor to complete the best image possible. Each of the band members are dressed is dark, colours to match the monotonous colour scheme which seems to be running throughout the cover. However, the leading woman appears to be dressed in stripes which help illuminate her importance and status as her costume stands out amongst the others. The use of an off white background again fits in with the running colour scheme yet also ensures that the background is as plain as possible to avoid a cluttered effect and maintain the element of simplicity.
    Similarly to Kerrang! NME's title is slightly obstructed which proves how strong their reputation is as people are able to recognise the magazines cover, despite the title being obstructed. However, unlike Kerrang! magazine, NME seems to incorporate a wider variety of linguistic techniques on their cover. The magazine incorporates alliteration and assonance in their cover, this over emphasises what is written and creates a sense of rythm which illuminate the fact that the magazine is a music magazine. The magazine also incorporates the use of exclamation points to create declaritives suggesting confidence in what they are saying and the use of rhetorical questions directly addresses readers making them feel involved and creates synergy between the two.