Existing Product Research - Rolling Stone Magazine

Rolling Stone music magazine was first published in November 1967 and has been hugely successful ever since, with a circulation of 1.4 million. It is based in New York City and is a US magazine in origin. It's fortnightly content is devoted to music, politics and predominantly, the new popular music culture of the day. It gives reviews, star interviews and regular music charts. As this the popular music culture is an area of music I am particularly interested in, I may consider this as the music genre I would like to 'copy' for my own magazine.
The typical target readership for 'Rolling Stone' tends to be young adults and teenagers, due to its focus on new popular music culture and the stars that includes. This is a vast target audience, therefore making it more popular as this demographic tends to read the most magazines per year.


Typical Rolling Stone Front Cover:
Looking at the elements of this existing front cover, I can analyse it in order to establish its target readership and what makes it so effective. The most dominant feature of any Rolling Stone magazine cover is the iconic image. These are taken from photoshoots of world famous music and occasionally acting stars. The image is used to form the entire magazine cover, including the background. This instantly draws fans of the featured artist to the magazine. The main coverline then links to this image and effetive typography and fonts are used to make the text stand out from th image and also draw attention. On this cover, two fonts are used for the coverlines and text above the masthead. It has a 'circus' type design and I like this as I find it visually effective.
The main title Rolling Stone logo forms the masthead of the page, and is placed behind the main image, which is a common trait of the cover, from my research. The iconic red and white typography is recognized worldwide and changes dependent on the cover. I really like the overall appearance of this front cover, as it is effective and I know the magazine to be great in content, after having read it myself.
Here is an analysis of the basic elements: