In the majority of The Big Issue covers, they have many things in common. For example, there are normally lots of bright and bold colours to draw the reader's/audience's attention. The covers are eye-catching with usually one main person on the cover. The Big Issue likes to challenge political topics like Trump and the Tories or even topics like poverty and homelessness. The magazines are always playing around with their words, creating puns in order to make the audience be intrigued in the ambiguous story titles. Furthermore, celebrities and well-known people are always doing interviews for The Big Issue which aids in attracting younger people. One of the biggest things that The Big Issue does is intertextuality. The term intertextuality refers to the process of creating references to any kind of media text via another media text. There is a lot of intertextuality between political issues and entertainment themes in a lot of the magazines. For example, in some of The Big Issue magazines, the people on the front cover may be holding a The Big Issue magazine, further advertising the brand. This aids in influencing people to read further into the magazine.The two magazines below have similarities and differences. Each one represents certain aspects of The Big Issue and what they aim to contain in their magazines. For both magazines, there is evidently an aspect of entertainment. On the left cover, the entertainment is shown by the use of a character from a new film that came out about an icon in history. On the right cover, the entertainment is shown by the use of the judges from The Great British Bake Off which has been going on for many years. Both covers represent icons in history. The Bohemian Rhapsody (Queen) cover shows an icon in music history whereas The Great British Bake Off cover shows an icon in baking history. The Freddie Mercury cover represents individuality and uniqueness. These are qualities in The Big Issue that are constantly repeated to show people that being unique and different is okay because everyone is equal no matter what. This cover is a fantastic way of showing power as Freddie has his hand up (this is a large part of the brand as they believe in a hand up, not a hand out). The Big Issue are always playing on words and creating puns however they have used words (in this cover) to symbolise the movie Bohemian Rhapsody. They have done this by creating Freddie Mercury out of lyrics from Queen songs, which is a very inventive and creative way (this is typical for The Big Issue). The Great British Bake Off cover represents a community and being proud. This is emphasised in the repetition of hints of the baking icon Mary Berry who is no longer on the show. The repetition of Mary Berry shows how she was a large part of the show and also how people miss her as she has changed people's lives all around the world. Some of the plays on words include French words (like 'bouche', meaning 'mouth' in English). This relates to French cuisine/French baking. As has already been said, intertextuality is used in this cover in the bottom left-hand corner on the mug. Even though The Big Issue normally shows people of different races, this is not evident on this cover. However, there are different genders so it does link in to how the magazines from The Big Issue try to target all different audiences (e.g. age, gender, ethnicities etc.). Both magazines use bold fonts in bright colours to attract the attention of people. The colour text on The Great British Bake Off cover stands out from the rest of the colours enough for people to know that that is the main topic. On the other hand, the colour text on the Freddie Mercury cover is the same colour as the 'clothes' that Freddie is wearing however, it still stands out because it is very large and it is also on a black background 9further making it stand out). Like the other cover, this boldness is enough for people to recognise that Freddie Mercury (Rami Malek) is the main topic. This could be linked to how The Big Issue magazines stand out from normal magazines as they represent community in an equal and positive way. The light colours used for the main topics could then also be related to how The Big Issue magazines are always trying to show the positives in society.
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