Analysing Block Titles

• The target audience for Kerrang! are 15 – 24 year old males, although it falls under the category of 15 – 44 year olds. Their block title aims at this audience by the use of structure, colour, context and denotations.
• The actual word Kerrang! is the onomatopoeic sound for a violent guitar string strum that implies the genre of the magazine; rock music.
• This is emphasized further by the shattered glass effect within the word that shows how violent the strum was, as it caused glass to break. This gives a sense of distortion and aggression.
• The font is capitalized and ends in an exclamation mark to attract the younger audience by its boldness. The rebellious feature of the coloured in ‘A’ is an anarchical way of going against the conventions of the alphabet; a symbol of their rebellious target audience.
• The black colour also reveals the genre and target audience of Kerrang! to be rock-engaged, stereotyped ‘emos’. This is heightened by the rough edges that could symbolise an audience that have rough lives.

• The target audience for NME are similar to that of Kerrang! – 15 – 24 year old males; their block title aims at this audience by the use of structure, colour, context and the denotations.
• NME stands for ‘New Musical Express’ which clearly denotes the aim of their magazine; to reveal new artists and genres to the world; a journey of discovery.
• NME sounds like ‘enemy’ which reflects a rebellious newspaper; even though now it is more glossy than it used to be.
• The colours are black, red and white that contrast greatly from one another – this symbolises the contrast of all the ‘new’ music the magazine covers. The colours are bold and attract the youth who ant to differ from the older generation and thus have new music, new style etc.
• The letters are capitalized; again to attract the appropriate target audience by its boldness. It is emphasized by a perfectly straight outline to express power, accuracy and stability; emphasized by the pointy ‘M’ centre. This could give the magazine a ‘cutting edge’ to attract the younger generation.
• The ‘heat magazine’ of the music world.
  

• The target audience for ‘MOJO’ are24 – 44 year old males. It falls into the same 15 – 44 year old category as the previous two, however this magazine appeals more to the older part of this target audience. The style, colours and context appeal to this audience.
• MOJO is often used to mean sex appeal, but in this case for a music magazine it means ‘talent’. It is associated with the 70’s, so the 24 – 44 year olds so those that favour this time period would enjoy this magazine. This shows that the genre of their magazine is very broad, concerned only with the best of the music world.
• The black and white theme symbolises the formality of the magazine, aiming at the older of the 15 – 44 year olds. Black and white are concrete colours that have always been in fashion, always used in everything and reflect upon power.
• The writing is simplistic and would not appeal to the ‘hip’ young generation. The font also has a shadow effect to reflect a night life or perhaps a reminiscing-the-old-days effect. Either way, it appeals to the target audience.
• MOJO is an old magazine, sticking to the conventions of the 70’s, which again heightens the word mojo itself having originated from that time period. This demonstrates the target audience to be older themselves.

• The target audience of ‘Q’ are 24 – 44 year old men. It aims at them by the use of colour and style of the block title.
• Much of the magazine is devoted to interviews with popular music artists and are well known for compiling lists; the letter ’Q’ reminds me of queues which reflect lists – a small denotation of the title in relation to the role of the magazine.
• The colours of red and white symbolise power, perhaps a sexual appeal. The red symbolises an alertness, an important warning, which is soothed by the peaceful white ‘Q’.
• It is aimed at the British audience so the colours that reflect their flag -white and red would be appealing to the British citizen.
• The fact that it is a one letter magazine shows the power and prominence of the newsstands.
• The letter ‘Q’ is not perfectly straight, it is slightly tilting to the left; this is visible by the red centre circle. This shows the ‘quirky’ side to the magazine, that is is not what expected. As well as covering the classic rock, it covers the left-field acts, hence the tilt to the left.
• The small shadow is used to show that it is following ’Q’ magazine, just like the target audience are as it is a top-notch magazine.