Front cover overview

3. The front covers in the second slide are all form the same magazine, Rolling Stone, all of these
front covers were designed with the intention of drawing more people in and to reflect the
artists style. Comparing these front covers will help me see the features and patterns which
repeat through out the various different rock artists.
The 8 front covers all have the same type of layout, a large main image of the artist(s) which
dominates a large majority of the page, sell-lines, typically on the left of the main image which
relate to the most interesting/important articles enclosed in the magazine, as well as the same
large masthead.
With Rolling Stone and most other rock magazines the image on the front cover tends to be of
a band not solely on one person, this is mainly done for older bands; putting the entire band on
the cover lets people know that they’re still together and makes them intrigued about what
they’ve been doing recently.
Even though they don’t alienate members of the band by singling them out, the magazine does
have them positioned in a way where the person who is associated with the band the most is
put in the centre. This can be seen with Robert Plant being put in the centre of Led Zeppelin's
issue of the magazine. None of the front covers that I choose to analyse feature women, this is
because there aren’t too many popular female rock artists. This could be because women are
seen as more delicate and wouldn’t be associated with such a rough genre of music, where in
reality there are so many different types of genres of rock which women have became very
famous in.
Rolling Stone is a very unique magazine when it comes to costume. They cover a large variety of
different artists, this means that you don’t just see the typical black clothes that most associate
with rock. You see a lot of different colours and materials when looking at the costumes in the
front covers I analysed, each of the artists have their own unique style and looks. This helps
draw more people in because it makes it feel more.

4. In Rolling Stone the masthead is always exactly the same and in the same position. The only
difference with it is that sometimes the colour of the letters slightly changes, but most of the
time the masthead is the standard black and red colour. Their signature masthead is what
almost everybody associates with Rolling Stone. The masthead is sometimes behind the
artist(s) but it is such an iconic masthead that it even when it is behind the artist people will
still automatically know what magazine they’re looking at.
Rolling Stone has its own personal unique brand identity, it hasn’t changed too much over the
years and everyone who reads Rolling Stone or has read it can recognize it. It doesn’t stray
from it’s simplistic style and tends to keep the same colour scheme.