Billboard magazine; cover analysis.

This is the music magazine called 'Billboard', it is published in America. It is one of the oldest trade magazines in the world. It maintains several internationally recognized music charts that track the most popular songs and albums in various categories on a weekly basis. The two most notable charts are the Billboard Hot 100, which ranks the top 100 songs regardless of genre and is based on physical sales, digital sales and radio airplay; and the Billboard 200, the corresponding chart for album sales. 
I chose to analyse this magazine cover because it doesn't look like a boring magazine, first of all, the title is very simple but effective at the same time. Its bold and has colour, i.e. inside the B (red), O (yellow), A (blue) etc, so it stands out and is very eye-catching. 
The image on the cover is a medium long-shot of Beyoncé, I think it's very important to have a well known face on the front of a music magazine of this kind; Beyoncé is an icon, she is an idol to millions of fans all over the world, so, having an artist as big as this on the cover will make the magazine very eye-catching towards the targeted audience. The photograph shows Beyoncé holding a trophie which suggests the photograph is from some sort of music awards. She is wearing a very striking outfit that makes her stand out from everything else on the cover of the magazine. 

Billboard is an all round music magazine, reporting on the latest news, issues and trends across all genres of music, however with this cover featuring Beyoncé, it tells the reader that this magazine will be largely focusing on pop/hip-hop/R&B.

The writing on the cover uses various different sizes and colours, the three main colours are yellow, white and pink. One of the top headlines on the cover being; 'BEYONCE MAKES HISTORY', which just shows how big of an artist she is within the the music industry. We can see that this is the main story as it is in a larger font size than the rest of the writing and is also a lot bolder.

The style of font seems to remain consistent throughout the whole cover, which proves to be quite effective because the colours and sizes take over in making the writing stand out.

The layout is quite simple, with Beyonce in the center surrounded by text, and the title partly hidden behind the image. The background helps to make the image stand out even more as it is aligned in the centre with several lines coming from the centre point of the photograph, which implies, 'all eyes on Beyonce', making her the centre of attention, which at the time that the photo was taken, she was, so it was very appropriate and effective.

Overall I like this magazine cover and I think the layout is quite effective, I wouldn't change anything about this cover.

This is another Billboard magazine, it's quite different to the cover with Beyonce on the front.
The photograph of Rihanna is full of vibrant colours, mainly bcause of the hair colour being red, but this is what makes it stand out. The photograph is a medium close up of Rihanna, and facial expressions can easily be seen. This pose also makes Rihanna look confident with herself and her position in music.
 The background is black, with just a few red roses in the bottom right-hand corner of the cover which match with the colour of her hair. The cover stands out very well 
The headlines, mainly on the left hand side of the cover tells the reader what and who will be included in the magazine. The main headling being about Rihanna, with her name in large, bold, capital letters going across the whole cover, also in a different style of writing and in italics. The 'caption' underneath this writing is also bold and italic, but smaller than the main headline, we can also see that this is a quote as it has apostrophes at either end. It reads, 'my fans don't really know who I am'; this is going to draw the reader in to the magazine and make them want to buy it so that they can read the story inside. Apart from this main headline, the font throughout the other headlines is consistently the same. However there is also text at the top of the page which also stasnds out as it is a bright yellow colour and the rest of the text is white.

The layout is similiar to the first Billboard magazine cover I analysed with Beyonce on the cover, but this one just has headlines down the left hand side of the page as the photograph of Rihannah is slightly more aligned to the right so her face is not quite central. However the title is always in the same place and doesn't change colour or font, again with the top of Rihanna's head covering a part of it, (as was Beyonce's in her cover).

The bar code is placed in the bottom left hand corner, ensuring that it is away from the main cover lines, so that the attention is kept towards the main features of the magazine.
Underneath the bar code are two websites 'www.billboard.com', and 'www.billboard.biz', this lets readers know were they can find out more about the magazine.