Magazine Genre Codes & Conventions Research Project (Brand Identity)

In this blog post, I will be talking about the brand identity of Rolling Stone based on all of my previous research done on my other blog posts. I will commence with the cover page of each issue I used.

The cover of magazines can tell a lot about their audience. The Jack White Rolling Stone cover, for instance, shows that this magazine is targeted at individuals in their 30s and who are rock fans...

...while the Donald Trump and Justin Trudeau covers add on to the common Rolling Stone demographic by showing how the magazine is targeted mainly towards Democrats (as can be seen by the article titles, such as "The Madness of Donald Trump" accompanied by the political cartoon drawing/sketch)

Therefore, as far as the covers go, they suggest to me that Rolling Stone magazine is targeted towards individuals in their late 20s/early 30s, Democrats, and mainly Rock fans (tend to be white non-Hispanic males). Also sometimes has articles on Hip-Hop/Rap artists and Pop artists, so those could be other target demographics (black non-Hispanic males for Hip-Hop/Rap/General American Population for Pop).

Now, I will be moving on to the table of contents on each of these three issues. The brand identity is used differently for different issues of the same magazine, as can be seen in the photos below:

The TOC (Table of Contents) with the Meek Mill Image (first one) differs from the other two TOCs, since it incorporates a seamless transition into what is the TOC and the main image. The other two actually have the main image of that page and the TOC separated. The main image for the Meek Mill TOC references and deals with a more serious/mature topic, while the other two aren't as serious topics/images, so that could be a reason why they differ. Nonetheless, aside from this and the colour scheme, everything else stays the same, so essentially, they audience stays pretty much the same. individuals in heir late 20s/early 30s, Left-leaning individuals, and Rock fans.

And finally, the feature spreads:

Again, as mentioned beforehand, you can see how each feature spread technically targets a different audience, but in terms of the ENTIRETY of the magazine, it suggests to me that it targets a wide range of demographics. The Jack White feature spread (first) corroborates the cover of that magazine, since it also features Jack White, and so Rolling Stone tried to appeal to its Rock fans in that case, however, if we look at, say the other two feature spreads, their feature spreads don't have the same subject as their covers. 

So, again, this suggests that Rolling Stone have a wide audience who they try to appeal to with each issue released (whether it be relating more to Rock music, or Rap music, or Pop music, or even politics, as well as a mix of all in one magazine, as can be seen in all three of the feature spreads (for instance, the Jack White Rolling Stone issue, which is directed more at Rock fans, also has articles on the cover about the NRA and criminal justice reform, which is more political).