Jamie's Similar Product Research

This magazine has no rule of thirds, as there is no actual text or pictures on the right, it’s all been centered. This appears to be the magazines house style, or at least one aspect of it. They don’t appear to use many pugs or puffs on the cover. They stick to having band photos with plain backgrounds, like one tone of grey, black or white. This issue must be a special one, as it doesn’t conform to that aspect of the house style. The main colours that they use are red, yellow and white; they sometimes switch out for a black, grey and white however. The magazine must be well established, given that they’re picture is in front of their masthead. They’ve used one banner at the base and nothing else really. This makes the magazine seem simple enough, but this could also make them seem simple and slightly amateur. In the picture they’ve gotten one person to stand in the foreground and the rest are in the background. The cloaked person is Marilyn Manson, because the anchorage text is touching him and the band in the background are Slayer, given the anchorage text is touching them. The cloaked figure is clearly the most important person on the cover, given that they are in the foreground, and the fact they are the tallest. The rest of the people are in the background and are all different heights, based on their importance in their band from a magazine/media point of view. The font’s they’ve used work well with the theme of rock and roll/metal music.  In this photo men are being represented as bikers, tough guys with tattoo’s who act like rebels. This conforms to the stereotype of men being tough guys but some of them aren’t, but this is what the music business is about, not having to be a tough guy to succeed and be famous.

This magazine follows the centering theme, given that they have no rule of thirds. The only magazine I’ve seen that does this is Kerrang magazine.This magazine has gone for a colour scheme of grey, black and white, but this could tie into the fact of it being a 10^th anniversary issue for AC/DC, so they went for colours that show this as being back before the days of colour printing, and it being in the past. They typically stick to these colours, but add in the colour red from time to time, like they’ve done here.  The picture is a band picture and has the band together, with them all at different heights, and at different points in the foreground. They’re all though, at similar heights and at similar points in the foreground, which shows they’re all equally important in the band. The anchorage text is touching the band, letting us know that they are AC/DC. The font they’ve used is a classy sort of font, but one that isn’t particularly over-used. In the photo, the band look kind of “punk-ish”. This magazine gives away free stuff on a regular basis, which is a good way to get people to buy the magazine, because people love free stuff.