Nikolay Amvrosyev
Mr.David
Language and Literature
October the 27th 2022
Magazine Cover Analysis
This short analytical essay will analyze my magazine cover based around superstar
Kanye West inspired by a popular rap magazine named XXL.
The magazine cover made me use powerful and eye-catching word choices to catch the
attention of the reader. The main story of the magazine is “Kanye West the King Of Modern
Controversy-Interview”. My main reason for choosing this exact sentence for the main story
description is because the utilization of such energetic and authoritative word choices such as
“King of Modern Controversy” accentuate the importance of the person that is being described
therefore attracting attention. One could also say that the word “Controversy” always attracts
attention as generally speaking a lot of humans adore drama, especially when it concerns
celebrities. I have also used a subheading to the main story to attract further attention from future
buyers. The subheading “Stay Tuned for new music from the best producer of the 21 first
century” uses word choice to further convince the reader to buy the magazine. I used “Stay
Tuned” at the start of the sentence to build excitement within a potential customer. Kanye West is
as huge of a musical artist as he is there are always millions of people looking for something new
in terms of music from their favorite artist so by using “Stay Tuned” I attempt to make a
customer so intrigued with the possibility of finding out the date for a new release within the
magazine they will be compelled to purchase the magazine. Throughout the magazine cover, I
used powerful word choices to catch the attention of a potential customer.
I used a lot of different stylistic choices throughout the magazine cover to attract
attention. For the magazine cover background, I used a sort of dark gray. The reason I used the
following color is that it is very neutral and makes lighter colors stand out a lot more than a
colorful background would. This technique is fairly common and is used by a lot of different
magazines. I used three different colors when it came to text: White, Yellow, and Black. White
and yellow are eye catching colors so I used them to achieve that exact effect while I used black
to contrast those colors and accentuatue samller deatails such as the “Exclusive” sign rigth below
the masthead. Another stylistic choice I used to make the magazine cover more visible and more
aestheiclly pleasing in general is font. I mainly used a font by the name “Babue Neue Cyrylic”. I
chose this specific font because it stands out, it has a very informal tone and yet a very clean
look. This specific font is also not extremely popular so it does make my cover stand out a bit
more. Another font that I used is “HK Grotesque Meduim”. As mentioned beforehand in this
prapgrpah when multiple diffrent stylistic choices form the same category are used they
compliment each other and make each other stand out. Another reason behind me using the
following font is that it has a much more serious tone to it then the “Babue Neue Cyrillic” so I
used it for things such as: the price, the date and the “Exclusive” tag. I also used positioning of
text in my magazine cover to make certain texts stand out more then others. Since the main
selling point of a magazine with a cover like that would be of course the person displayed on the
cover I figured that the best place to position the main article title would be right on the
aforementioned picture so when the picture is seen so it the main article title. I also positioned
the subheading to the story right under the main title so after the person reads the main title he
will almost certinyl continue to read the subheading which makes it more likely his curiosity will
be peaked by the wordchoice. I can also add that to make the “Exclusive Poster Inside” text piece
more visible and eye catching I added a white line to make the text stand out more compared to
the other pieces of content that are visible on the cover. Theses stylistic choices helped me create
a extremely eye catching and interesting magazine cover.
To make the magazine look more appealing to my target audience I picked and used a
certain tone throughout the magazine cover. The tone I used was a very informal one as can be
seen in the vocabulary used like “Bucks” and “writes his raps”. Since the target audience I was
aiming for is young adults and teens this type of informal tone makes the magazine a lot more
intresting to them as a use of a informal tone in the cover often reflects that the only purpose the
magazine serves is to entertain. An informal tone helped me make a magazine cover that will
appeal to a select group of people.
In conclusion throughout tha magazine cover that I created I utilized a lot of diffrent
techniques aimed at making the magazine more noticeable and more appealing to the consumer.