In my opinion the magazine as a whole is a very good one, and has a great style which has given me something to work alongside when making my own magazine. You can see my Analysis of Front cover, contents page and feature articles to see what I thought of the style of those specific parts. Despite is great style and appealing looks, I think that the magazine is a little to confusing as to what things are and where they are. This is partly to do with a confusing contents page - which is split over 2 pages, with adverts in between, and doesn't seem to cover everything (although it probably does). Not only this, but the amount of adverts is the magazine is huge, especially near the start. I feel that the adverts could have been all before the contents page, or all after it, and the magazine could have much more defined sections to make it less confusing.
I think it would help if the contents pages did not have adverts in between and were next to each other, and also if the title pages for each 'section' were a little more clear. For example, for one section called "The Splurge" there is an advert for books on the left page, and then the main picture on the splurge page is a TV, which makes the page look like an advert itself. Then, when you go into this section, it is laid out as 'Page,ad,page,ad,page,ad' and only a few pages further in are there any pages at all which manage a double page spread without seeing an advert. When you get to these sections, the magazine starts to look good, but with adverts every other page it gets confusing and un-attractive to read.
The magazine is clearly aimed at Middle class Males around the age of 25-35, but also at aspirational people at the 18-30 range. On vibe's website (Which is the company, not just the magazine) they say that "The new Vibe is the premier destination for urban music, entertainment, culture and lifestyle for the aspirational 18-34 year old." You can tell this by the way the articles, pages and adverts are - The contents pages feature one person dressed in designer clothes on each page, all the adverts are for things such as cars in the £20,000-40,000 range, designer clothes and perfumes. Some of the articles are about very expensive things themselves; one section is about fashion and features a $200 bow tie. Most articles and interviews feature a lot of writing, which also suggests a more educated audience. This can be compared with something like The Sun newspaper, which features and lot of pictures and minimal amounts of writing and is not aimed at such an educated, intelligent audience.
However, you can tell from it's style that it is aimed at a younger audience. For a start, the type of music that this magazine is about is usually liked by younger audiences anyway (RnB,Rap, Hip Hip) and this is further illustrated on the front cover, where you see Usher, and Usher only. The word "Usher" also appears on the front cover with a small quote from him, to further clarify who it is - you can probably tell just with a glance if this magazine is about the type of music you like just from a glance at it. It adopts a sort of "Smart-Casual" style, in which it looks professional, but certainly not Formal. Throughout the magazine, whether it is an article, contents page, front cover, interview, special feature, it keeps the same type of style in which writing varies in colour, size and format, but only on a small scale. For example. the front cover involves only 2 colours of writing - yellow and white. On a feature article I have talked about the only colours are white,red, and black. By doing things like this, the articles always look interesting, but still maintain a professional and casual look.
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