The document analyzes the branding and design of Billboard magazine. It notes that the masthead uses bold black and white text on a dark background to catch readers' attention. The colors convey sophistication and maturity, appealing to an older teenage and young adult audience. The central image of Rihanna also aims to attract both male and female readers, especially female fans of her music. Coverlines on the left use bold black text on white to stand out and intrigue readers with snippets of article contents. The overall design features a continuity of colors like white, black, yellow and red to convey sophistication and enjoyment while making text easily readable against the dark background.

1. Analysing
Billboard
Magazine

2. Masthead/ Brand Identity- White, bold
wording placed on a dark background.
These colours contrast, resulting in the
masthead catching the audience’s eye.
Together the colours black and white
connote sophistication and maturity. This
appeals to an older teenage/young adult
audience.
Puff- white and yellow contrasts
with the dark background. It’s main
use is to promote the ‘film and tv
music conference’ as well as their
website. It also informs its
audience of what issue it is.
Billboard is published by Prometheus Global Media. This company is
extremely well-known as it owns and operates a number of major
entertainment industry trade publications. This is why in some issues of
‘Billboard’ it doesn’t matter if part of the brand identity is hidden due to the
mass audience being fully aware what magazine they are looking at (due to
other factors such as the continuity of the colour palette and the layout.)

3. Central Image is of Rihanna. This would attract
an audience of both genders- in particularly
girls due to many girls being fans of Rihanna’s
music. In this picture Rihanna is looking
directly into the camera over her right
shoulder as if by surprise, or as if she’s got
something to hide.
Coverlines are
situated on the left
hand side of the
magazine. Each
coverline begins with
a catchy, snappy 3
word introduction.
These are in a bold
black font placed on
white, this stands out
as the white contrasts
with the dark
background.
Underneath this is a
small taster of what’s
inside the article,
leaving the audience
on a cliff hanger- this
intrigues them making
them want to read on.

4. Headline/Splash- The
big, bold, white font
begins to fade to
almost see-through
towards the bottom
of Rihanna’s name.
This relates to the
quote beneath this,
suggesting that parts
of Rihanna aren’t
seen/known by fans.
Rihanna’s nickname ‘Ri-Ri’ has been used
as a pun ‘RE-REINVENTION’ . This adds
some humour to the seriousness of her
article. Only Rihanna fans would
understand this pun as others may not
be familiar with this nickname.
The fact that her tattoo is clearly visible to the audience on
the central image also relates to the splash as it makes the
audience question why she’s got a weapon tattooed on
her.

5. And more…
• House Style- continuity of colour pallette: White, Black, Yellow
and Red. These colours connote sophistication, maturity and
enjoyment. Most of the text is white, this contrasts with the
darkness of central image/background making it stand out. The
‘in-your-face’ Yellow writing above the masthead promoting a
film and music conference was also extremely eye catching as
the brightness somewhat glowed against the black background
which it was on.
• Mode Of Address- language is chatty and informal, which
appeals to the teenage/young adult audience as they tend to
sway away from using standard English when it comes to
communicating with each other.