Comparison Of Magazine Front Cover

The genre of the magazine covers above follow a hip hop music theme. These are great in order to compare the codes and conventions, of what magazine covers would consist of. The target audience that the magazine soueces are looking to target are based around young people or those who follow the hip hop world.

The denotation of the “The Source” magazine on the left is a close up shot of a man who has many tatoos and is wearing a hat backwards. He is also looking directly into the carmea is a posing, which is shown by his hand on his jaw. This automatically draws attention of the viwers, as the charicter used in the magazine cover is a well known American hip hop artist. The connotations of the front cover of the magazine cover are that the man is showing great power throguh his apprence in the cover, with the tatoos, the hat and the facial expression/ gesture. The cover line “High Minded: inside the brain of Lil Wayne” shows relation back to the image used in the magazine cover of Lil Wayne, as he is presented in a powerful manner. The magazine cover on the right hand side is taken from the magazine source “Vibe”, this is another famous and well known artist who is also showing great power by looking directly into camera. The charicter used in this magazine cover is the artist “Drake”, power is shown by him wearning a hat and two silver chains which shows he has the gangster look and would ideally be from the music world. The connotations of this magazine cover would be that he is more superior as part of his head is covering parts of the “I” and “B” in the masthead “VIBE”, this draws attention to him along with the way in which he is dressed.

The images used in both magazine covers are of well known hip hop artists, who are well known in the public. The aspects that drags great attention to these magazine covers is the colours and images that have been used.  “VIBE” magazine has more texture sourrounding the main image, this shows that the charicter used in the image is the most important thing on the magazine cover. On the other hand “The Source” magazine cover has most of the text on the right hand side of the magazine cover which is a convention that is used in many magazines. “The Source” magazine cover is not as effective as the “VIBE” as it is not as appealing. In the magazine cover “VIBE” many conventions are used such as the fact that it uses the text, as it is writen from left to right, this is effective as we read from the left to the right. On the other hand “The Source” does not follow this convention as the text is writen on the right hand side of the magazine cover.

Both the magazine covers are similer in the layout of the magazine front cover, but saying this they also show diffrent observation on hip hop and R&B music.