The first thing that becomes apparent when you look at the front cover of ‘Mojo’ magazine compared to ‘Clash’ is that it’s bursting with headlines, images and colours, to me this makes the cover a lot more appealing than ‘Clash’ I also like the fact that there’s only two main colours (black and red) to set the house style as well. The mast head stands out quite well, but the main head line has more of an appeal to it, which therefore distracts the reader from the mast head. Although I like the way there’s more contents on the front cover compared to Clash magazine, there’s possibly just a little bit too much! The price and bar code are in the bottom right hand corner and cleverly just blend in to the background, which I believe is a good thing as it doesn’t distract the reader from the rest of the features although it could be bad for the retail of the product. There’s only one thumbnail image upon the front page, again just like Clash magazine, I think this is a purposeful intention of the editor, so it doesn’t divert the readers eyes away from the main featured article. Compared to Clash magazine, there’s an awful lot of teasing comments presented along the bottom, perhaps too much again, but upon the top left corner there’s another convention used, to explain you get a free C.D inside this is called a 'splash'graphic. The main headline does relate to the highlighted image, showing professional qualities. Bauer media group’s the institution behind Mojo magazine and is a well respected institution too, also owning two other music magazines (Q and KERRANG) establishing the fact that these three magazines must follow a similar style and music genre as one another. Ideology: it must be to prove that rock music also has a place in the music World, just like pop, indie, classical e.t.c. The target audience for Mojo magazine, is for those who are interested in rock music and I don’t think it matters how old you are either, because it’s been around since 1993 and looking at some previous issues of Mojo there are a number of older rock bands featured such as; The Who and Pink Floyd compared to The Doors (featured) and Oasis. Finally the way in which the target audience are represented just by the front cover of Mojo is somewhat positive, but there could be a problem with stereotyping, simply because of the ‘rock’ element and how badly fans/supporters of rocks are negatively/badly represented by the press.
The first thing that becomes apparent on the contents page, is that it doesn’t actually say ‘contents’ anywhere, maybe after all it isn’t that professional, or it could be that the target audience subscribe to the magazine so they know what to expect? This is suggested by the caption ‘REGULARS’ connoting regular readers. I like the way the images along the left hand side are a selection of sizes implying that perhaps the larger photos are of more importance than the smaller ones? Also the pictures have captions with them so you can locate them to the listing along the right hand side. The house style has been shadowed onto the contents page giving it that professional flare once again. I find the notes from the editors/team add a rather personal touch to the magazine most definitely if you are a ‘regular’ reader. Once again just like front cover there’s a lot of content upon the contents page which I find rather distracting, but to some this could be quite appealing and entice them even more. Compared to Clash magazine and the fact the editors donated a double page spread to the contents page suggests that Mojo like everything to be compacted into their monthly issue and want to present as much information as they can within the cyclical release.
Looking at the language features used upon this double page spread compared to Clash magazine are as follows: the whole layout of the interview with the feature band, is set out in a similar style to an essay, which isn’t that appealing at first but I like the way it stands out above the back ground because of the white used on the font. I also like the way the word ‘fire’ has been emphasised in red to catch the reader’s attention, unlike in Clash magazine. A similar tactic that both magazines have followed is to highlight the first letter spoken in the interview, which is quite clever and points the reader in the right direction too. Unlike Clash magazine I enjoy the way they’ve done a brief overview of the interview at the top, I guess therefore it can help the reader make the decision if they wish to pursue in reading on.
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