Case Study: NME magazine

Background and Ownership
NME - New Musical Express- is an indie rock magazine created by Theodore Ingham in 1952. It was the first British paper to include a singles chart and in the 1970s it became the best-selling British music newspaper. An online version of NME was launched in 1996, NME.com . The magazines present editor is Mike Williams. The magazine is published by the UK's leading consumer magazine publisher, IPC media. IPC creates content for multiple platforms, across print, online, mobile, tablets and events and owns brands such as Marie claire and Now.

Content and approach to music

The magazine aims at genres such as pop/ rock and is often associated with punk rock. The reader profile includes aspects such as; the readers average age is 24, with a high rating of male readers- 69% male, 31% female, 52% work full time and 29% are still studying.

Double page spread analysis

The masthead "The Week" followed by "everything that matters in music" influences the reader to think about the future for the music industry. 'The' suggests that this indeed is the week that focuses on music and that this is solidly confirmed. "The week" is visually separated by its size and style of font for a greater impact, impact is also created by the use of monosyllabic terms "the week" making it sound quite blunt and again implying that there is a meaning that has been confirmed of what this representsI think the use of visual separation of black on white is effective as it creates two meanings, by making the reader wonder what the title would mean if it was separated. For example; 2014 suggests a discussion of forthcoming events, therefore the 'big questions' must be about upcoming events.

The extracts featuring information on "experts and insiders" appears to be highlighted in white in order to present the text more clearly. I think this works well appose to a surrounding box, which can be common in magazines front covers and double page spreads, as it is visible yet not distracting on the page.

The image works well on the page as unimportant features can be covered with text. The lights and table form 'v' shapes structuring the page well as they are supported by the interesting triangle shaped page numbers, all of these aspects seem to be pointing to the artists in the centre of the page portraying them as important. The image delivers bold colour enabling the pages presentation of text to be fairly simple.