Target audience - NME magazine

As part of our main task for our AS Media, we are going to be creating a music magazine. As part of our research, we looked at different music magazines and studied their target audience.
The magazine that I used was the New Musical Express (NME), and I used the October issue. I had to answer two questions based on a specific article - I chose an article on American artist Darwin Deez - the answers of which are below.

1. How does the double page spread you have looked at use a layout (text and image) to suit it's target audience and style?
The double page spread has been split into two halves horizontally. The top half is a picture of the featured artist - Darwin Deez. The background of the picture is simple and bright blue, so the main focus is on the artist. The colour of the background is not gender specific, yet it is bold and playful, making connotations about the kind of artist that Darwin is. The title of the article is 'Let's Dance', another suggestion that the artist and article is more fun as opposed to serious. The fact that there is half of the page taken up by image makes the article look smaller, and therefore this would suit the target audience- young people- as they may not have the concentration, interest or time to read a really long article.

2. What type of mode of address is used by this magazine to appeal to its target audience? Pick out words and phrases as examples.
The magazine addresses the audience in a friendly and informal way, using words like 'douchebag'; this shows a colloquial tone. This shows that the target audience is supposed to be a young one, who will understand these modern terms. There is reference to circulating YouTube videos ("Being a D*ckhead's Cool"), once again showing the youth of the intended audience. This, combined with reference such as Nirvana and The Prodigy portrays an appeal to young people who listen to recent rock, indie and electronic music.