The denotation is simply what you see on the page. The denotation of a double page spread is an article that is presented over two pages of the magazine. The fact that it takes up more space than most of the articles shows that it is one of the main features in the magazine and so this will attract the reader. The target audience s the audience that the magazine is aimed towards, and this includes gender, age, ethnicity, social class and lifestyle. The target audience for NME is white males ages 18-30 who are either middle or working class, and have an interest in stereotypically masculine genres of music, such as rock, alternative or indie. The genre is the style to type of a product. The article title is the name of the article, and this is conventionally placed at the top of the page so that it is most visible. Here it is extremely large and bold. It takes up around half of the second page, which makes it one of the first things that the reader will see. It is in a black font, which hugely contrasts with the white of the background, making it very clear and easy to read. It is written in capitals which makes it feel as though the words are being shouted at the audience, thus making them seem more important. This also shows that the target audience is male, as stereotypically, The words are not in ordered lines which makes the page seem busier. The subheading for this article is an introductory sentence, which gives the reader more of an insight into what the article is about. This allows them to decide whether or not they will be interested in reading the article, without having to read the whole thing. The subheading is designed to attract the target audience to the article, and does this by mentioning other celebrities such as Kate Moss, who they target audience would had heard of, thus drawing their attention. The subheading is also written in a black font, making it clear, and Dizzee Rascal’s name is in bold as it is him that the article is written about. The main image is the most important image on the page. It is a photo of Dizzee Rascal which takes up the whole of the first page. This photo is used as the article is about him, and the scale of the photo shows that this is one of the main features in the magazine. Mise-en-scene is the elements that make up an image, including location, pose, costume, lighting and props. Dizzee’s clothing fits in with the colour scheme of the magazine, as he is wearing a red jacket, a white shirt, and dark jeans. This repetition of stereotypically masculine colours reinforces the focus on male readers. He is not looking at the camera which suggests that he is not welcoming the reader, and implies that he is guilty and doesn’t want them to know about his secrets. This is effective as it naturally makes the reader want to find out what he’s hiding. A medium long shot has been used for this image, and this shows some of the
Transcript
The denotation is simply what you see on the page. The denotation of a double page spread is an article that is presented over two pages of the magazine. The fact that it takes up more space than most of the articles shows that it is one of the main features in the magazine and so this will attract the reader.
The target audience s the audience that the magazine is aimed towards, and this includes gen-der, age, ethnicity, social class and lifestyle. The target audience for NME is white males ages 18-30 who are either middle or working class, and have an interest in stereotypically masculine genres of music, such as rock, alternative or indie. The genre is the style to type of a product.
The article title is the name of the article, and this is conventionally placed at the top of the page so that it is most visible. Here it is extremely large and bold. It takes up around half of the second page, which makes it one of the first things that the reader will see. It is in a black font, which hugely contrasts with the white of the background, making it very clear and easy to read. It is writ-ten in capitals which makes it feel as though the words are being shouted at the audience, thus making them seem more important. This also shows that the target audience is male, as stereotyp-ically, The words are not in ordered lines which makes the page seem busier.
The subheading for this article is an introductory sentence, which gives the reader more of an in-sight into what the article is about. This allows them to decide whether or not they will be interested in reading the article, without having to read the whole thing. The subheading is designed to attract the target audience to the article, and does this by mentioning other celebrities such as Kate Moss, who they target audience would had heard of, thus drawing their attention. The subheading is also written in a black font, making it clear, and Dizzee Rascal’s name is in bold as it is him that the arti-cle is written about.
The main image is the most important image on the page. It is a photo of Dizzee Rascal which takes up the whole of the first page. This photo is used as the article is about him, and the scale of the photo shows that this is one of the main features in the magazine. Mise-en-scene is the ele-ments that make up an image, including location, pose, costume, lighting and props. Dizzee’s clothing fits in with the colour scheme of the magazine, as he is wearing a red jacket, a white shirt, and dark jeans. This repetition of stereotypically masculine colours reinforces the focus on male readers. He is not looking at the camera which suggests that he is not welcoming the reader, and implies that he is guilty and doesn’t want them to know about his secrets. This is effective as it nat-urally makes the reader want to find out what he’s hiding. A medium long shot has been used for this image, and this shows some of the subject’s legs and upwards. This allows the audience to see all of his outfit, showing us that he is dressed very casually. This makes the magazine seem a lot less sophisticated and suggests that the magazine is aimed towards people of a lower class, as stereotypically it is the upper class and the pup middle class that are sophisticated, not the working class. This shot type also allows the reader to see the background, which is a graffitied wall. This links to the genres of music that NME focuses on. Both R&B, which is the genre of music that Dizzee Rascal plays, and rock both connote vandalism and rebellion, and so this location will help to attract the target audience. Connotations are the ideas or feelings expressed.
The other images are the less important images on the page. They are placed underneath the ar-ticle are also relevant to the content in the article, however these images will probably not help to attract the target audience to much, as without the article these images have no meaning. Because of this, these images are a lot smaller than the main image.
The drop cap is where the capital letter at the beginning of the article is enlarged so that it takes up more than one line. It is very large and bold which draws attention to the beginning of the arti-cle, which makes the reader more likely to read it.
The article is split into columns are used to position the text. The columns are equally sized, and so although these pages appear to be busy, they appear to be quite organised. This is more vis-ually appealing for the audience, as they will be less overwhelmed by all of the content on one
page. The fact that it seems organised shows that although the magazine is aimed at younger men, it is not aimed at children.
The font is the style that the text is written in. All of the texts are written in black font, as this again contrasts with the white background. The font used for the main heading is sans serif, making it seem less sophisticated, and emphasising the fact that the magazine is targeted towards middle and working class men. However, a serif font has been chosen for the article itself, making it look more official, which implies that it is telling the truth.
Quotations are things in the article that are directly quoting what Dizzee Rascal said. They have been used in the article to imply that it was Dizzee himself that said these things, making the audi-ence more likely to believe that the information provided is a fact.
The by line is where is tells the reader who the article is written by. This helps the reader to recog-nise writers that they like, and so will help to persuade the target audience to read it.
Page numbers are placed next to the article titles to inform the reader of that page each article is on. This helps the reader to be able to navigate through the magazine easily.
White space is the space on the page with nothing on it. Empty space is mostly hidden as the background is covered in graffiti, which makes the pages seem busier. Graffiti has connotations of rebellion, which links to the target audience as men are stereotypically more rebellious than women. This also links the the genres of the magazine as it focuses on both rock music and R&B, and they both connote vandalism and rebellion.
The colour scheme is the colours that are used consistently throughout the magazine. For this double page spread, the colour scheme is the same as the colour scheme for the front cover and the contents page, and includes reds, black and white. These colours appear to be more mascu-line as the colour red connoted anger and aggression, both of which are stereotypically masculine qualities and so will attract the target audience.
The mode of address is formality the language used. used again seems to be very informal. This is because colloquial language is used to make it seem to be more conversational and friendly. It also highlights the younger age and lower class of the the target audience, as stereotypically these groups are less sophisticated.
The overall impression if this page is very busy, and this impression is given by the lack of white space, and the size of the images. This gives the effect of an unorganised appearance which again links to the fact that the magazine is aimed towards a less sophisticated audience stereotypically.
