Parris's Magazine front cover Textual analysis

While doing my independent research I mainly focused on the British film magazine ‘Empire’ which is published by Bauer Media. The issue I will be analysing is for the film ‘Iron man 2’. The main image is of the main character who is ‘Iron Man’. The magazine draws more attention to the main image because it is placed in front of the actual magazine title. As you can see there is lighting shining down on the character, this could mean that they want the audience to feel he is a hero and maybe looked up to, preferably by young boys. The light source on iron man is his heart, which is a glowing mechanism inside him. The light being that bright could mean that he is ready to take on new missions and that he is bigger and better than he was before.

The title ‘Empire’ uses the ‘EF Kaffeesatz Schwarz’ font which causes the magazine to be differentiated with other magazines. This is because most magazines whether it is film, music or gossip happen to use basic bold fonts such as ‘Impact’ or ‘Kartika’.  The colour of the title is an electric blue which is the same colour as Iron Man’s heart, this could connote that the title ‘Empire’ is the heart of the whole magazine. The lightening behind and to the sides of the title look as if it’s electrocuting the title and that’s its creating making the title the energy source of the magazine. Underneath the title is what looks like a sticker that states ‘Ultimate review of 2009’. This could help capture the audience’s attention because it gives a reason as to why the audience will enjoy reading the review.

The release date and price of the magazine are in-between the to peaks of the letter ‘M’ in the title ‘Empire’. They could have been placed there to not draw away any attention from the title and for it to stay/hide in the distance.

The main cover lines which are about the main image are across the middle of the main image but below Iron Man’s heart. This is because the light from the heart is giving the cover line a bright glow to make it stand out more than the other cover lines so the audience knows that it is the main thing to read about in the magazine.  The cover lines at the bottom of the page do not stand out as much because the images are small and the white font is put on a dull grey which gives a sense or boredom.