Joshua Scott AS Media
K E R R A N G !
Kerrang! Is produced and published by Bauer Media Group and is targeted towards a younger audience who have a passion for rock and punk music. Their audience's mean age is 22 and balance between genders. The younger audience is extremely useful as it's a hard market to grab a hold of and they are very easy to encourage to use other forms of media such as mobile phones and tablets which makes marketing a lot more effective.
Kerrang! is a weekly magazine and is available for the low price of about £2.20 in most shops which fits perfectly with their audience as they're going to want fresh news as often as they can get for as cheap as they can get it as most young people don't earn much money or a still in education. Kerrang! has 42,967 copies circulating as of July-December 2010 according to bauermedia.co.uk.
The title ''Kerrang!'' is derived from the sound created when a heavy chord is played on a electric guitar. Given the simple origin of the name, it still remains very clever and relevant to the style and audience of the magazine. Since it's obviously targeted towrards a rock crowd it makes perfect sense to incorperate the main instrument or nearly all rock bands in to the title. It gives the cover a very strong style and makes sure it is a clear representation of the contents of the magazine in regards to genre. The use of an exclamation point also makes the title a lot more dramatic as you cannot help but read it more dramtically than if it didn't posses the exclamation point. This also links to the rock genre and how loud and in-your-face it can be. Overall the wording and punctation used in the title keeps very much in line with the house style and genre of the magazine and gives it instant presence amoung other titles due to this.
The typeface used is very bold with distress marks along the edges with various scores through it as if it were shattered glass. The title is very large here and takes up a majority of real estate on the front page solidifies the identity of the magazine and gives anyone who even glances at it on shelf the identity of Kerrang!. The distressed style of the title is a strong link to the type of clothing people who listen to the rock genre usually wear; ripped jeans and distressed look clothes. The smashed appearance of the title could also be a homage to the stereotype and old school rock artists such as the Who, who used to smash up their equipment after playing a gig.
The main image and strapline on the cover is of Green Day and All Time Low and displays a banner saying ''Green Day Vs All Time Low'' with the strapline ''they've been through hell to bring you the pop-punk show of the century''. Also, the banner features a lure saying ''this is do or die...''. These are all written in a font which is nearly identical to the font used in the header except for the scores than ran through it, which these do not have. The main section of the banner is in two different colours, yellow and blue with a strong black dropshadow with each band name in a different colour to set up and distinct difference between them. This also helps the banner contrast from the intense green, patterned background. The rest of the text is in black with a white highlight to separate from the background image and to help it frame the main banner. the use of colour and dropshadows helps to give the impression that the text is hovering over the image which really grabs your attention which will help it sell next to other more plain magazines.
The image features one member of each of the bands Green Day and All Time Low. They are wearing dark clothes, one in a black shirt with a loose stripey balck and white striped tie and the other a black t-shirt. They're both displaying a cocky, self-confident pose which fits the Vs theme of the cover very well as it offers that competitive look of confidence and aggresion.
The cover also features exclusives and offers such as the free posters and the ''first album review'' for Black Sabbath. Features such as this offer the audience a unique value and an exclusivity that you won't get anywhere else. It gives them a elevated self importance as they's feel as if they have completely unique information that has never been heard before. This makes the magazine much more appealing to buy and gives it a good reputation from within its fanbase.
On all of these features such as the banners and the sticker we see the same high contrast and bold look to all of the font and page design. However, the font is a lot cleaner with a white outline on the balck font to keep it visible against the green background. The font is alot cleaner here to make it more legible and keep the cover looking clean as the more grundge style font would not work at this size and cause the cover to look messy or hard to read. This means the audience can immediately see the stand out features of the magazine which means it is much more likely to be bought than a very minimalist cover that doesn't display much information.
