Textual Analysis 2

Denotation:

The magazine cover consists of a colour photograph of a woman looking straight at the camera. It is a medium long shot showing her head, arms and waist. She is standing turned to the right but she is facing the camera. The background of the photograph is pink and the photograph covers the whole of the magazine cover. Behind the woman is the Billboard masthead and beside her is a cover-line in black. Also beside her are 4 separate cover-lines going down the left hand side in black and yellow writing and 1 above the masthead.

Masthead:

Billboard’s masthead is quite plain but with a bit extra. The font used is a Calibri font and except for the ‘b’ at the beginning, each of the letters is in lower case. Each letter with a circle in the middle apart from the ‘b’ at the beginning has a different colour filling the circle.

Character:

The cover photograph is of the American singer Katy Perry.

Composition: She is posed in a sexy and seductive way. She looks quite ‘hot’ in her pose. Her body language and clothing are more attractive to men as well as women.

Costume: Her clothing is a purple dress with flower patterns on it and ruffles at the bottom of the dress. This shows off her arms and the part of her legs we can see. The way she is dressed appeals to the target audience who are more likely to be male than female. The clothing worn is similar to the costumes she wears in her new music videos to promote her music. This connotes that she is a very peaceful person as she also has real flowers on her dress and over her head. Her black short-fringed hairstyle successfully completes the look.

NVC: Her non-verbal communication is also seductive. Her mouth is open revealing her pink lips and dazzling white teeth as she stares right at the camera.

Lighting: The lighting in high key but not really bright as the photograph was taken indoors.

Setting: The setting isn’t really clear as all we can see is a pink background. However, it looks like she could be standing in front of a pink wall.

Cover-lines:

The main cover-line reads: “Katy Perry: Inside the court of the new Queen of pop.” This goes with the clothing she is wearing in the photograph because that is the type of clothing pop royalty would wear. The ‘Queen of pop’ refers to the fact that Katy Perry was named the most listened to artist in the UK. This goes with her expression in the photograph. She looks really care free which shows that she doesn’t worry about her fame as she it the ‘queen of pop’.

Target Audience:

Considering all of the points above the likely target audience would be people aged 18 – 25. Younger people would know a lot more about this type of music and the artists in this magazine.