Vibe magazine front cover analysis

Intro:

• Vibe magazine is a music and entertainment magazine founded by its producer Quincy Jones
• The magazine mainly features R&B and Hip Hop artists such as Lil Wayne, 50 cent, Eminem, T.I., Beyonce, Jennifer Lopez etc.
• The magazine is issued every quarter of the year
• The target audience for the magazine is most likely to be someone who is young and urban followers of hip hop culture. 

Front cover:

• The front cover features a picture of Hip-Hop artist Lil Wayne. In the picture Lil Wayne is shown with attitude in this picture. He is shown bare chested with a red jacket undone to show most of his upper body tattoos with a gold chain with a cross pendant and another gold chain with a stop-watch pendant.You can see most of his facial tattoos and piercings in the picture but it is hidden by the black shades that he is wearing, Lil Wayne is looking up and on the reflection of the black shades you can see a reflection of the American flag on it which shows that he looks up to his country and is proud of it. He is also wearing a black hat which contrasts with the red jacket and the white background.
• The magazine name 'Vibe'  is at the top of the magazine in a white, bold font. It is behind the picture of Lil Wayne near his head like a halo. This has always been the tradition for the Vibe magazine name as all the editions have the magazine name behind the picture of the feature artist. Below are a few examples of other Vibe magazine editions and as you can see they have the Magazine name behind the feature artist's picture.

•  Above the title there are a few artists names e.g. Meek mill, J. Cole, Keri Hilson, etc.
• The main feature story is written ;Weezy still hip-hops leading man?' this title is worded really well as this would grab the reader's attention especially the Hip-hop lovers. 'Weezy' is written in a large black font so it catches the readers eye then 'still hip-hop' is written in a much smaller and grey font almost making it not visible. Finally 'leading man' is written in the same large black font that 'Weezy' was written in. It creates a large-small-large effect and this is used for most of the remaining feature stories. They have made this the main feature story as Lil Wayne was the feature artist so doing an article on him would be appropriate.
• Other feature stories include; 'George Lucas, fly guy', 'Tupac, menace to Hollywood', 'Chris Rock "hip-hop's glory days have passed", 'Denim guide for dummies', 'La La and Tika's killer fashion adventure'. All these articles are different from each other and and would grab the readers attention due to the way that they are interestingly worded. Also in a small font at the bottom of the magazine there is a little statement saying 'The views expressed by Chris Rock, do not represent Vibe. We love waka!'  this suggests that they believe Chris Rock's statement is just an opinion.
• A USP of the magazine is the QR code scanning feature, there is a  QR code on the front cover of the magazine that can be scanned by the reader's smartphone(if they have one) using a barcode scanning application. Once you have scanned the QR code, it allows you to gain access to exclusive content. This is different as no other magazine have such feature on their magazines.