Front Cover Analysis

The magazine title billboard is speacialised in r&b and we can instantly see this from the artist shown .  The magazine was founded in 1894 by William H. Donaldson and James H. Hennegan as a publication for the billposting and advertising business, but expanded over the decades to cover amusements, motion pictures, radio, recorded music and other areas of the rapidly growing entertainment industry. The masthead of Billboard is in big bold white writing and is behind rihanna, this is conventional and represents the celebrity more.this also shows that because this is a strong brand identity, they dont have to show the entire name. Even though the audience dont see the entire name they can recognise the magazine name by the colours (Red and green ) used in Bs and Ds.


The target audience would be aimed at young people from the age of 14-18 and for girls especially they would be influenced by rihanna as she could be their idols. The background is black which makes rihannas hair and liptick stand out as its shocking red, therefore, attracts readers more effectively than other magazines which use less brighter colours on the front cover. The deep red on her can connote danger, passion or romance. This is called polysemic. Her lipstick matches the masthead which links the two together . Her dress also looks modern which suggests that the target audience is young people preferably females.


You can see that her posture is very provocative and seductive which relates to her facial expression, as  quite aggresive and this engages the readers attention by direct address. the sell lines show a summary of what would be inside the magazine. So for example the sell line "newsmakers, winners from mobile entertainment live" implies that a lot of people use mobiles and tells us about what the audience is interested in and what they want to see. In addition, the magazine uses names like pitbull who was a very modern r&b artist. Publicists are aware that the digital age is becoming increasingly strong as they prefer to read the online copy over the paper copy. Looking at the the text " the re-REinvention of rihanna" shows how she has changed a lot over the past few months in a good way and complared to motnths before she looks much better and healthy as she had a lot of problems before. It also shows how publicists kind of exaggerate and the quote 'my fans dont really know who i am' implies that readers might want to read on more about the artist.  Overall i think this magazine is aimed at young females who envy Rihanna