NME Analysis

What is NME magazine?

NME is a British music magazine that focuses its content on rock and alternative music. NME is released weekly and is edited Mike Williams. NME has been published since March 1952. However in July 2015, NME changed to a free, lifestyle magazine that is available to pick up in train stations, universities and retail stores.

For my analysis of NME I am going to annotate an older issue of NME when it was completely dedicated to music and then the a newer lifestyle issue of NME.

NME Front Cover: 

The newer style/editions of NME follows barely any conventions of a magazine front cover and is therefore completely different in style to the previous edition of NME. Because the newer style/editions of NME don't follow many conventions it makes the magazine front cover less busy and chaotic which some people might proffer. Overall I think think the previous style of NME's front cover is better because it allows the audience to find out more of what is inside the magazine and allows the audience to identify the individual/individuals in the main image because of the headline.

NME Contents Page: 

Both editions of NME don't follow that many conventions of a magazine contents page, for example the 50:50 ratio of text to image. However the new style/edition of NME has kept some of its previous features for example having page number written in red font and keeping the name of the sub-headings the same. I think that the original style of NME's contents page is better because it has more detailed anchorage text, provides more articles and involves more colour which makes it eye-catching.

NME Double Page Spread:

Both editions of NME follow various conventions of a double page spread, the style and layout of the article will affect how many conventions are on one double page spread.

Generally the newer style/edition of NME follows less conventions of a magazine than the first/original editions of NME however this is probably because it has changed from being 100% music magazine to being lifestyle with a small amount of the articles being about music. Therefore I am not going to use the new style/edition of NME as inspiration when designing my own music magazine because I feel that it is too minimal and doesn't follow enough features. However I will use ideas and concepts from the first/original editions of NME when designing and producing my own music magazine.