Front Cover Analysis

Front Cover Analysis

The 'Top Pops' magazine's main image is of Rita Ora. She's a famous pop singer, so her presence in this magazine come's to no surprise. The photo is a close up of her upper body to her face; however most of her body is covered by text or other images making her face the most clear and emphasised part of her body. This is probably because her face is most likely the most recognisable feature of her.     

 The rest of the cover is filled with more images and text, therefore the designers must have wanted the whole of the cover to be full of different aspects that draw in the audience, without 'wasting space' on things that wouldn't necessarily interest the target audience. Usually if more of her body was shown, it could be used as a form of voyeurism, interesting an audience for that cause. However, the bright colours, fun fonts, young/girly slang lang and smiling celebrities on this cover tell me that this magazine is targeted at young girls. 

She is almost giving eye contact with the camera, but not direct contact as her eyes are slightly to one side. She has a big smile on her face and her hand is placed on her chin. The fact that her eyes have indirect contact with the camera by a tiny fraction makes the audience feel more at ease and relaxed than if her eye contact was straight into the camera. A direct eye contact shows fearlessness, power, rebellion and confidence; this would probably be the wrong implications for this target audience, so the indirect contact shows a sense of shyness and playfulness which adheres to the conventions of pop music being all about fun.

The main image in the mojo magazine consists of a midshot of a member of the punk rock band 'Sex Pistols'. Almost his whole upper body is visible, and of course his face and hair. His outfit is a frilly shirt and a dull grey/blue blazer, which isn't an uncommon look for the band. The colours of his clothes appear rather dull, especially as they blend into the light grey background. This brings the attention completely off his clothing, representing his outfit as unimportant compared to his face and hair. His hair is  bright ginger, completely contrasting with the dull colours of his clothing, the background and even the majority of the typography. He is staring directly into the camera with a blank facial expression and has a sharp jaw line. These features imply fearlessness, power, strength, rebellion and provocative qualities. This makes him seem troubled or rebellious and makes audience feel inferior.

This adheres to the punk rock genre because of how this genre of fashion and music wanted to rebel against the government and the relaxed, peace filled lifestyle of the 1960's. The punk-rock genre loved controversy and rebelling against the happiness and peace from the 60's, so this eye contact definitely adheres to the genre as it comes across as quite aggressive or threatening.

Both of these main images have similarities in the way they immediately adhere to the conventions of their genre, but the reason they appear so different is because of how different the genre's are. 

For a start, they are both very clearly the main image as they are both significantly larger than anything else on the covers. 

A similarity they have is the way in which their eye contact implies a specific mood and genre. Rita Ora on the 'Top Pops' magazine has slightly indirect contact with the audience, while in the 'Mojo' magazine, the member of the 'Sex Pistols' has direct eye contact. The indirect contact implies shyness and innocent, playful qualities, while the direct eye contact implies the complete opposite: power, fearlessness and rebellion. The emotions and themes explored in Pop and Punk Rock are completely opposite. Pop is all about fun and happiness, which is why people consume pop media as a form of escapism. Punk Rock on the other hand explores angst, rebellion, hatred and even drug cultures.

So, they are clearly extremely different genres, however both magazine's use the same technique of playing with the eye contact of the celebrity to imply the theme which then interests their specific target audience.