Clash Magazine Analysis

Clash is a monthly magazine that features on new and popular music of most genres so has a very wide circulation for the music magazine industry (40,000 approx. circulation) and has won countless awards.

The design for the front cover of Clash magazine has been kept simple compared to some of its previous covers. The cover has a theme of grey, white, red and black, and has no other colours featured, and the main image of Dizzee Rascal, is also wearing a jacket matching the colours of the cover.

The background is a light grey, but not a grey that is light enough to not contrast with white. The title Clash is in large and at the top of the page to signify that it is the title, its text is white and an effect has been made on the a and s which I presume is their trademark effect. Yet some the title is overlapped by the main (and only) image. But before the title, at the top of the page you have a cover line; the text is again white and has the main part in bold, then the body of the text unedited. Moving to underneath the title you have the biggest cover line, but not as big as the main headline for obvious reasons. It follows the theme colours strongly by using red black and white. The cover line is about something featured within the magazine, with the ‘100 most outrageous rock star quotes’ from my understand the stereotypical rock star would have make statements that may turn heads or shock people, so this gives and insight into the magazine featuring all genres as this cover line is a contrast to the main headline. The word ‘the’ in this cover line is the smallest piece of text on the whole cover, its black and italic. The second line with ‘100’ is the biggest past of the cover line, is also italic and red. The third part is black, a largish font in comparison to other parts of the cover line, fourth part has a white font, slightly smaller than the third part but bold. The last part is italic with the word ‘quotes’ You could presume that the editors or creators of the magazine used a variation of size, fonts and colours to create a theme to make the cover look attractive.

Moving down to the next cover line it entails that it is offering 12 free music downloads, which is attracting to anyone who downloads music and know that buying many can be expensive. The word ‘free’ is in bold whereas the rest is standard font, making the word ‘free’ bold highlights its main feature, the fact is that the downloads are free, and legal. Underneath this is the barcode and price, then a page separator, and at the very bottom of the page you have the final cover line with 5 artists of different genres that are featured in the magazine, the fonts for all 5 are the same, but for every other artist name, the font is slightly faded for contrast.

Moving on the main headline, it is clearly identified as the font size is the largest upon the page with some parts in bold for a similar effect. The headline begins in red, but with a smaller font than most parts with ‘The Saviour of British Pop’ with underneath the largest font of the whole cover and changes to white colour-wise with the name of the artist Dizzee Rascal. Dizzee is a pop, grime and rap artist which helps with the magazine’s aim to be about all genres of music. Underneath this the font becomes much smaller on contrast to Dizzee’s name with ‘The definitive interview’ this signifies and gives the reader the idea that this could be the most detailed interview Dizzee Rascal has given and if the typical reader is a fan of Dizzee Rascal, they’d be automatically interested.

The cover’s main image is of Dizzee Rascal, which obviously links to the main headline, this trait is common and mostly used for all sorts of magazines and newspapers. He is wearing red and white, which interlinks into the theme of the magazine, giving the cover regularity along with the fact his pose is of him saluting, which signifies the magazine portraying him a ‘saviour’ of British Pop.

Audience profile

Since this is a much generalised music magazine I have found it hard to identify what would the typical audience be. So from my own assumptions I would say this magazine would appeal to teenagers to adults in their early thirties who have a keen interest in many genres of music. With interests and hobbies such as listening, appreciating music, buying music, attending festivals and gigs, and socialising with people who have similar tastes. I’d say when it comes to class the typical audience would fit into C2 and below categories.