Analysis of magazine covers

  

These two covers are film based but there is a definitive contrast between the two. The two magazines are aimed towards different images hence the contrasting colours and fonts. EMPIRE is aimed towards a younger audience, you can tell this by the use of bold font and cover lines that features famous actors.

Sight and sound is aimed towards an older audience as it doesn't feature much colour and doesn't use a famous figure as the central image but instead just uses an image of people shooting a film.
The use of famous figures and 'x men on the front cover' will appeal to a young audience as well as an older audience as it is recognisable. EMPIRE magazine is very blue tone whereas sight and sound magazine is extremely dark and doesn't feature much colour other than a splash of red and yellow in the title and in the cover lines.
The masthead for EMPIRE is extremely large and noticeable to stand out whereas sight and sound is less eye catching.
In EMPIRE the front cover features more than one type of topic so if the reader wasn't interested in x men there is also many other categories featured in the magazine so it will appeal to a wider audience whereas sight and sound seems to focus on similar topics except the fact is features 'Sorrentino's il divo' festival then also talks about 'Disneys Pinocchio' to try and target a bigger audience.
Sight and sound is more of a formal magazine as there isn't much writing on the front cover whereas EMPIRE had a lot of bold writing as it's targeted at a different, younger audience.