Adbusters

Adbusters

Detournement - Hijacking (French) AKA 'Culture Jamming'

The practise of criticizing and subverting advertising and consumerism in the mass media, by methods such as producing advertisements parodying those of global brands.

Adbusters Covers 

The genre of the magazine is not immediately clear, the cover does not give away what could be on the inside of the magazine. It could also be a parody genre, like the movie Scream of which is parody of slasher movies. This is because they have so many conventions to parody. It could also be a political magazine with dark humour. The magazine has a very informal mode of address, the covers have an enormous central image of which appears to be a convention of the magazine. The mastheads are all different, this inconsistency in comparison to other magazines shows they do not have a brand identity unlike vogue. The barcodes are in different places in every issue, this suggests that the producer has strong political views.

Adbusters does not feature paid adverts, if they are features they are culture jamming them. They publish an issue 6 times a year of which makes it bimonthly. Its RRP is £10.99 for 120 pages, which is expensive for a magazine but this is because it has no adverts. Its readership is 120,00 worldwide of which is quite small. It's genre independant as it has no official genre. The magazine is non-profit, so it only makes enough money to pay it's contributors.

 Adbusters Front Cover May/June 2016

The layout is very bold and there is a very strong central image. It appears to be making some kind of political statement. the line 'Post - West' could symbolise the post western world, in particularly America. This suggests that America has been destroyed by capitalism and commercialism. The army jacket anchors the idea that the western world is at war and that the ideas of western countries are being challenged. The image suggests they are excited by war, this implies that modern society gets excited by war and that it is woven into our society and that this magazine rebels against that. The 'grot' mise-en-scene that is covering the masthead to anchor the 'post-west' idea, to destroy the identity of the magazine. They have used a photoshop spray paint tool to achieve a self vandalism, of which suggests the producers do not care what the audience think about them. The magazine is bold and aggressive of which commands an audience to but the magazine, the audience does not know what content they will receive inside. This is not a conventional magazine, you have to know about Adbusters to buy it.

This magazine subverts many conventions, the masthead is plain white sans serif font of which looks deliberately bad. The black background is deliberate to create an anarchist message and it's own brand identity. The non stereotypically attractive man on the front cover of the magazine, suggests that this magazine id more out there than others. Its social political message is that life as we know it has changed, it has links to post-truth.The front cover i age is not anchored unlike other magazines, this presents a hermeneutic code - we solve this code by buying the magazine and reading it.

Every issue their masthead is changed, this subverts the conventions of a magazine and areas their brand identity. The black background is uncommon and in combination with the central image of the guy screaming, is unusual as the image is not posed whereas normally it features a model from a photoshoot. The central image is very full on and features an hermeneutic code as it leaves the audience asking questions. The cover line is 'Post-West' in the same font of the title, of which may cause confusion with the audience is dominantly positioned in the lower third of the cover. The social/political message gives a 'post-truth' message, and requires intertextuality for the audience to understand the message. The front cover image is not fully anchored, it assumes a level of understanding in the audience - the meaning is not fixed. the cover lacks conventions of magazines, reflecting the independant and subversive nature of the magazine.