Magazine Cover Analysis 2

Dazed and Confused is a music magazine based for a female, middle class audience at a 18 to 30 age range. It focuses mainly on music but it is also a lifestyle magazine as it reports on fashion, arts and culture, film and political and social issues.

The front cover has a very limited colour scheme and only uses white, black and a gradient blue. Blue is known to be most people’s favourite colour and the light blue has a calming effect, which fits in with the band’s music and image. They use the same writing throughout the cover and the bold white writing contrasts well with the blue background and the bands hair. The cover also lists over features included in the magazine under the title, which although printed small, still stands out as your eyes are diverted straight to it after seeing the name of the magazine. Being aimed at a middle class market, they used sophisticated colours to make it look like a high quality magazine and by using the colour blue makes it suitable for men and women to buy it. They also have a lot of free space on the cover to make it seem clean and less cluttered than other magazines which could give off the impression that it’s a high end publication and will get to the point with their articles.

The appearance of the band on this cover is quite unusual as their blurred into the white which gives a smudged effect but the outlines of the bands faces and hair makes them stand out, as does the contrasting black jacket behind the white ‘XX’. The positioning of the band is normal for a music magazine, with the main singer in the middle to show the importance of that person to the band and the significance of them to the bands image.

Dazed and Confused also publish a lot of fashion content within their magazine which would appeal to the female audience and so the music featured is also likely to be aimed at females as well. The use of designer brands such as Dior, Chanel and Louis Vuitton in the magazine would further suggest it’s for a middle class audience who would be able to buy the clothes and this would give an idea to some of the adverts used in the magazine which are likely to be for clothing, perfume as well as band tours and arts and culture related shows. The magazine being aimed at an older audience, it has politically motivated content but the magazine will stay neutral with its adverts and not use any publicity for political parties or groups so it doesn’t offend or put off any of its readers.