The iconic Andy Warhol banana from Velvet Underground's album; Velvet Underground & Nico immediately grabs the readers attention. This is because the banana is right in the centre of the page, it's also the biggest image on the page and is one of the most recognisable album covers to exist. This has been done so that the reader can instantly reconise what the main article is. The NME is typically known for celebrating artist indie music such as the velvet underground, who are idols in the indie world, and when an NME fan opens their issue to see what the main article is, they will be excited to see that an article on the band is on page 24. The other images being smaller also effects the importance on the main article. Bananas are not usually bigger than people, of course. But, the fact that this banana is a bigger image than the six images of bands indicates that this is a particularly important article to read in this issue of the NME.
The colour scheme used helps the audience to instantly reconise the genre of the music magazine. None of the colour used are bold colours and the paper isn't a bright white, which suggests that the magazine is not going to be about mega loud or super squeaky clean bubble gum pop.
The audience is also reconisable from a glance of the contents page. Everyone on the page looks to be younger than 35, which suggests that the audience are supposed to be the same. The image about Velvet Underground is not of the band members themselves but instead of their album. This could suggest that the NME don't want their readers to be put off by a group of old men or an old picture because that doesn't fit with their ideology ( New Music Express) because the band are not in any way new.
This contents page from Q magazine is much more glossy, with brighter images and a bigger page. This tells us that more money has been used to make the magazine, suggesting it has been made for those with more money compared to the NME readers. The magazine features two bands of which Damon Albarn is a member telling us they are fond of his work; who covers many genres himself, in keeping with the magazine's ideology.
By looking at the two pages we can see that the magazine is very diverse in genres as we see 2D from Gorillaz next to an image of the village people. These two groups are not known to be associated with each other in any way so it can be a shock to anyone expecting a single genre. The image of 2D being larger than any other and not being crammed for space, tells us that this is the main article. It is by it's self, with white totally surrounding it, making it the most clear image as it's the one Q want us to see first. Like the NME contents page above, this contents page has 7 images. This seems to be common with rock music magazines; usually having 5,6 or 7 images. This is so the magazine stays true to it's conventions and the audience will always expect the contents page to look similar to this so they feel familiar with it and know what they're getting from Q.
One difference this contents page has to the others is that it has the articles featured down the side, so the readers know what articles are featured and where they are.
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