mag analysis

RWD magazine is a urban magazine based on underground music, clothing and performing arts.  It consists of range of different artists in this particular area of music eg) hip hop, grime, dubstep, funky, bassline, drum & bass, r'n'b and US house. the magazine tends to focus a lot on UK life style.

It’s called RWD and short for ‘rewind magazine’, which relates to music, and often DJs when played rewind good songs. This magazine targets young teenagers (13 years of age) to mid 20’s because of its informal language and coloring. The main colors used are black, yellow and blue. The uses of these colors are to show to bring about a dark vibe to the magazine, which attracts the eye of both sexes. The main image would usually have urban music stars or underdogs that are on the peak to blow in the musical world. The body languages are mainly slouched or maybe dance movements and the clothing is always casual to draw a youthful attention. The writing is in bold letters and and a graffiti styled font. This targets young people and stands out as more urban. On some of the RWD magazines, there is a lot of copy/text but on some, like this example there is only a sub heading. This is effective because it focuses more on the main story of the magazine. The text relates to the targeted audience being young urban music fans as it says 'B-Boy special' which sounds like street slang. RWD have a website which links to the magazine but has more interaction and media sources like music audio, music videos and artist profiles. this magazine was brought about around late 2003 and the main cause of this was due to the uprise of the urban genre of music, grime.

Kerrang is a magazine that revolves around the rock, metal, and indie genre of music. The magazine is targeted at young adults and teenagers that love this kind of music. Like RWD, this magazine usually has a popular artist or underdog on the front to appeal to the target audience. The main image usually looks dull and moody to bring across the whole gothic feeling. In relation to the image on the front, the main colors are black, red and white, which relates to the whole gothic side of music. The title of the magazine is to refer to the revving of a heavy guitar sound and it’s portrayed on a broken glass image, which depicts loud sounds. The copy is placed at the bottom of the main image that fills almost the whole page. This makes the main image more obvious and outstanding. the bold and colorful writing on the page helps to attract more of a young audience and as it contrasts with the gothic conventions on the page, it appeals more to the target audience being young rock/emo styled music lovers. The main heading stating, 'My Chemical Romance' sounds like an oximoron and comes across as  slightly disturbing which also targets the target audience because rock music is usually associated with disturbed contents.