Magazine Front Cover - Analysis 3

The Monkees Go Mad/Mod – Analyse

This Magazine cover has a very simplistic and easy to read layout, with the masthead covering quite a large portion of the top half with the selling line below, this is all the Magazine provides as information of the articles and the Magazine itself leaving the half as an image of just The Monkees themselves as this Magazine is just about The Monkees and no one else, its their personalised magazine. The Masthead is large in scale with a font that looks like something you’d find on a Circus magazine or poster. It’s interesting that “Mad” has initially been changed to “Mod” which although is confusing as to whether they use Mad or Mod as the correct term for the title, its not a Music magazine as such so it’s a twist for The Monkees magazine rather than advertising music and other bands. Furthermore, it may be short but the selling line beneath the Title is short but straight to the point and relates to what is in the article of “The Monkees Go Mad/Mod”. Ironically the colour scheme works well with the dress colour of the image – Black, Green, Red and Blue are part of the colours used above with the font but are the colours worn by The Monkees’ too. Targeting the audience isn’t so precise for this, there isn’t any cover lines that hit out to certain ages, it’s more to the audience of who like the band as it’s The Monkees magazine, so it’s targeting people who like that band and would read this because it’s just about them. Only a few colours are used but they’re mostly outstanding and bold especially with a lighter colour in the background, this creates an impact with the front cover and generally these colours attract the eye of the audience especially if the Text/Masthead/Selling line is all easy to read. Not every front cover needs more than 5 Colours, especially in the 60s when the trend was using a vast majority of colours in a single cover.  Beneath, on the bottom half of the front cover is a happy photo of what the Magazine is about, with it being the only photo on the cover this allows the main one image to be scaled quite big. People are more willing to buy something that is happy than depressing, the colours in the image being quite pleasing are helpful to the happiness of the magazine too. Along with that, the little Monkees guitar at the bottom is a symbol to show that the image is of “The Monkees” and it breaks up a little bit of the black box right at the bottom.