NARC Evaluation

House style is used to great effect on this front cover – the photograph and writing all being black & white, with only one piece of text deviating from this. This brings attention to this piece of text – in this case, the band featured in the main article of the magazine. The photograph is a long shot of two men, both looking straight towards the camera. The mise en scene is that of a recording studio, and the naturalistic nature of the poses suggests the article is a relaxed interview with the band in the studio. The language used it very minimal, simply listing the names of bands featured in the magazine. This fits in with the very minimalistic colour scheme and fonts, to produce an extremely stylish cover. The cover features several common conventions – for example, the magazine logo is much larger, and in a different font, than the rest of the text. This makes it stand out, and makes it very obvious from a distance which magazine it is. The magazine’s slogan appears underneath the title, as does the issue number, date, and price. These are staple features of a magazine’s cover, and are crucial. All text on the cover is in capitals, making the text stand out.

This contents page adopts a “blocky” design, featuring various blocks of text and photographs. The image is captioned and features a page number for the article – a very common convention. The photograph is of the same band from the cover, this time seemingly in the process of recording. This reinforces the message from the front, that it is a relaxed interview whilst the band is in the studio. This cohesiveness is also present in that the house style is continued – the predominant colours still being white, black and pink, giving the magazine a sophisticated image. At the right, a box with the header “CONTENTS” lists key articles from the magazine. It doesn’t list every article – a very common occurrence – and each article is labelled with its page number in bright pink. The titles of each article are in capital letters, whilst the descriptions are lower case, and this combined with the pink numbers means it is very easy to glance down the column and see which articles are where. A letter from the editor takes up a large part of the page, introducing the reader to the magazine. Underneath this are details of the contact information for the magazine, inviting readers to participate in it’s online forums or submit letters.

The house style colour scheme of the rest of the magazine also continues through to this double page spread. Its use is still the same – black and white, with pink highlighting certain parts. In this case, it is used to highlight key quotes from the article, so that a reader skimming through would get the gist of the interview and hopefully read on. Photographs of two members of the band take approximately half of each page up – unusually, uncaptioned. The photographs are very intimate looking close ups – again, signifying that this article is intimate and honest. The text is split into one column per page, which is much more aesthetically pleasing than huge blocks of text. A large portion at the bottom of the page is taken up by the article’s title, half of which is written with the letters facing backwards. This is not only aesthetically pleasing, but contrasts with the photograph above it – the letters are facing left, yet the man is looking right. It also possibly suggests the band is taking their music – as Music is the word written in this way – back to basics. Furthermore, it gives the impression of the article emanating from the page, flowing outwards. This is extremely stylistic, and looks beautiful.