Front Cover Overview

All the front covers of Blender magazine have all been designed to attract fans of RnB music. Although all the front covers look different they all have shared features that crop up in every magazine. These repeated patterns will be established thoroughly.

The eight Blender magazine fronts cover all feature magazine front cover conventions, like general and layout conventions. All the magazines is displayed with a main image that dominates the front cover with sell lines around the main image, featured article images that relate to what is revealed inside and an big, bold, brave masthead with a font that reflects the genre. In addition, the model is always stunning and seen as a sex appeal which appeals to men’s sexual desire.

In addition, each front covers features repeated patterns. All eight front covers feature a female artist which relates to RnB genre of music. This is expected because of the magazine is aimed at those who favour RnB music. The consistent appearance of attractive young women who have made it big in the industry of music, tend to crop up on the front covers. This appeal to both men and women’s desire of a beautiful role model and being attracted to what they see. The way in which the front covers are laid out, shows the fact that women are powerful and have status in the RnB music industry. This is an effective way to attract the audience, which are males and females who are intrigued within the RnB music. Also as a magazine Blender is smart with the images that they chose to engage their audience as they use artists that are well – known within music.

With all the front covers I have used feature women as I thought it would be easier to analyse women to gain ideas for my music magazine. However there are Blender magazines that feature men on the front cover and are as effective as women, because it appeals to women. This illustrates to us that today in society, there’s an equal balance of sexes to be displayed to the public, so it is common for women to be on the front cover of magazines.

The similarities that are seen throughout all the eight front covers that have been displayed is the mise – en – scene elements which are presented on the front covers. In terms of costume the majority of the artists are dressed provocatively, with bright vibrant colours. The costumes are items of; bra and shorts which reveals their cleavage and their toned abs. Also Janet Jackson is wearing a jacket with a bra underneath but has purposely unzipped the jacket to reveal her body. This is known as the familiar look and synonymous with RnB artists. However the front covers which feature Alicia Keys and Leona Lewis break away from the traditional conventions as they are wearing a reasonable length top, covering up the majority of their body. This look is not very common on the front of an RnB magazine but it could symbolise that they are serious as well as being seen as sex objects and being the desire to others. On most of the front covers the artists have long hair; long hair is seen as being popular with the loose curls dropping down amongst their shoulders. It matches the genre of music as being free from everything and can act wild when listening to this type

of music. Out of the eight different front covers, two of them have straight hair compared to the staggering six with loose curls dropping on their shoulders. On the cover that Rihanna is featured on, she has short straight black hair; this is seen as unusual to all the other covers that are presented.

Another shared feature that is across the eight magazine front covers is that they all include sell lines. Normally it tends to be in lowercase, in a smaller font. The fact that there is space devoted to featured articles, shows that RnB magazine are filled with articles and stories inside. It also helps you with keeping your appearance up and guides for customers to receive when buying a magazine. With all the featured articles only one front cover has an image to give you an in site into the article given.