The magazine cover features a photo of Kanye West looking directly at the camera with a moody expression. The large font masthead matches the red theme of the main cover lines. The main cover line "Kanye" runs across the center to catch the attention of potential buyers. Additional cover lines like "Showman", "Genius", and "Sh*t-stirrer" reference Kanye's performing talents as well as his controversial public persona in order to generate interest in the magazine issue. The color scheme of black text on a white background helps the masthead and cover lines stand out clearly.

1. Masthead: ‘NME’ has the usual bold, capital white letters
on a red background. These match the main cover lines
theme. It is fairly regular font that’s large and bold made to
stand out for the audience to see straight away. Main
image. The cover artist for this issue is Kanye West looking
straight at the camera with a moody, hard looking
expression on his face. This shows a cold and cool persona
about him. He is wearing a chain in this photo if you look
around his neck. This could show his wealth.

2. Main cover line: the cover line “Kanye” (like most
magazine’s main cover lines) is going right across the
centre of the page. This is so that anyone who might be
browsing for magazines they will straight away notice the
cover line saying “Kanye” maybe even ahead of the main
image of him. This along with the main image use of Kanye
is a marketing technique that is used to market their
magazine to wide range of audience because he is a
massive global star known by most of the world even
people who don’t like hip hop music. He is also a very well
known star due to the fact that he has a lot of publicity
surrounding him and as they say ‘there is no such thing as
bad publicity’.
Other cover lines: “Showman”: This is note to the fact
regardless of what people think of him he is a terrific
showman and always has a large audience at any of his
shows. It could also be a reference to how his life is always
in the public eye. “Genius”: This is a note to the
controversial and heavily argued opinion that Kanye is a
genius. Fans of hip-hop and Kanye himself heavily support
this argument. It is has been argued against those who
don’t and probably know him mostly due to his high
visibility in the public eye. Regardless of who is right a
note of a controversial topic like this may influence
readers to buy the magazine to see inside. “Sh*t-stirrer is a
bleated out version of a phrase used to describe a person
who is always causing trouble and drama and is
something definitely a synonym of Kanye’s personality.

3. Colour scheme: Black tone used for the cover artist and a
white background is used well to contrast and make the
masthead and main cover line stand out.