Tiffanys Textual Analysis of Empire Magazine

Empire is a British film magazine that is published monthly. The first issue was produced in July 1989. The actor who is used on the front cover is Hugh Jackman famously known for playing Wolverine in X-Men or Wolverine.

I feel this type of magazine would target a male audience, aged 16 – 24, probably middle class living who are generally very interested in media and film.

I feel the background of the cover it quite interesting. You can see the sky with blue/white clouds that is actually very beautiful. The way Wolverine stands in the middle of the background and his posture gives the ‘he is here effect’. You feel that he is super human.

The colour scheme of the poster is various shades of blue, white and black I feel this relates to x-men. The majority of x-men posters always have a bluish/greyish element to it.

The masthead is in a bright red serif font. The font and colour is very eye catching and stands out to the audience. The colour and the font for empire masthead is like signature of the magazine, it never changes and is a key way of selling the magazine. The magazine has become branded and a prestigious film magazine that’s why its so important for it to stand out. The P is not visible in the masthead it is cover by Wolverines head. This is not a problem because empire is such a well-known film magazine, this abides by the conventions that most well know magazines go by. `

By the barcode being at the bottom right of the magazine abides by magazine conventions of barcodes being at the bottom of the page.

The lighting that is used fades in from low key at the top of the page to high through most of the photo. The clouds block some of the light shining through which gives the cover a mysterious element. I feel the lighting that is used is appropriate for the genre of film x – men is, x-men is a sci-fi action film. If x-men were a horror we would see a dramatic change in lighting from high key to low key.

Wolverine is dressed quiet ordinary, however his posture, facial expression and claws piercing through his knuckle show the audience that is not an ordinary individual. The way he is dressed may symbolise that he is or used to be and ordinary person but something changed. The hair on the face of wolverine and the muscles shows that he’s a real man, a lot of hair normally symbolises a real man.

The pricing and date has been placed in the arch of the M in empire, this is quite a smart place to position the price and date because it does not take any extra space up on the page and still gives it a unique look. Also the writing follows the same shape as the V going from longest sentence to shortest word.

The magazine has various subheadings on the front cover. Some of these consist of star wars and ghostbusters, this shows that the magazine targets a range of audience. This makes the target audience very diverse and can gain a lot of money due to the many audiences it attracts. The heading at the top says ‘ wolverine has returned for empire’ this makes the audience feel that this is an exclusive issue. It also shows that wolverine is a important character. Most of the readers would have already know of wolverine due to marvel comic book and x-men movies.
There is a website link underneath the masthead. This is good advertising for the magazine so even if people do not buy the magazine they can still see the website link and read online. On the opposite side of the page it says worlds biggest film magazine in capital letters, this shows the audience that there is no film magazine better than there. Also the part about x-men is in a bigger font than the rest this shows that x-men is the magazine special.