Evaluation Question 2

 

Rolling Stone is the magazine which I took most of my inspiration from, as it had the look I was going for, is a music magazine and is also of the same genre which I was aiming to achieve. Above I have chose three covers of Rolling magazine featuring bands similar to my featured. The cover featuring the artist Bob Dylan is similar to my structure, in terms of layout. Although this image may be different, the image on the Rolling Stone cover is slightly easier on the eye than mine, and his is an unnatural pose while sitting down. 
This is where the NME cover featuring Arctic Monkeys comes into play. I took a lot of inspiration of the entire band shot because it suggests unity. I feel like this summarises the feel and adds hype on the fact that they are a BAND and not a group of separate people. This is a good indicator of setting an image up for a band and when you look at my sell line 'Best Band In Britain', it suggests that they are new on the scene and this creates an identity. When you relate this to my target audience and theme of my magazine, I feel like I meet a convention because I try to sell the idea of British Guitar Rock- and when you look back into the past, the most successful ones are the likes of Oasis, Blur, Arctic Monkeys- all who are bands.
When you relate my cover to the one of Maroon 5, they suggest unity also. Although their lead singer has drifted off onto the American version of The Voice and sings on Slash's solo effort, before the past couple of years, they have been very much a proper band, with none of them really stealing the limelight. This cover here is from November 2012 and although he had began to garner some fame by this point, this image suggests that they still want to be viewed as equals. When you look at the pose, Adam Levine is standing at the front and is the most dominant of the characters- which may play to Rolling Stone's target audience of being interested in the All-American ideology as he is standing there looking like a confident metro-sexual male. 
My cover is portraying a group of young 'lads' all with vacant expressions which is relational to a hegemonic form of masculinity; this represents a young, male social ground, one who will likely appreciate British music of working class topics and look for bands who they can see as inspiration or respect them. I feel that my cover is quite arrogant and they look like they are portraying hegemonic characteristics- in showing no emotion. When you look at the one of Maroon 5 they look confident but not arrogant and actually look like nice blokes. This is relational to my audience because I feel that they will likely be working-class and although there is an obvious crisis in masculinity, they also still hold the attitudes of traditional masculinity, it is more the superficial exterior that has changed into a more feminine role- something I have met as they all have well-groomed hair and are dressed in smart-casual attire with a Topman sort of stylisation. The Arctic Monkeys one has a similar pose to mine, suggesting a jack-the-lad attitude. I think when you look at males, the stereotypical "super smiler" is very much only for women who are trying to appear confident. Men are expected to reserve their emotions.

Here's me talking about that:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-JXDns3-Ck&feature=youtu.be