Analysis of my front cover

The main image used in my front cover is a student collecting her folders from her locker. She is smiling which gives the impression that she is enjoying her time at college. This is good because the main audience of my magazine is college students and year 11 students that are choosing which college to study at. The date on the magazine is April so I have chosen the colours accordingly. I have made the stories appealing to students because I feel that if they are interested in the subjects raised, they will be more likely to buy the magazine. The background for my title is purple and green because those are the colours that Wyke College use in their logo. In my footer I used “10 things college students do best” as the story. I used the American magazine, “College Magazine” as inspiration as one of their stories was “10 things university of Pittsburgh students do best” although this was a university so the 10 things were mainly alcohol related so I couldn’t put any of those in my magazine. I also mentioned equal voting rights for students which I feel will be quite a popular item to read about in spring 2013 as there may be some political elections in the summer that students will to be allowed to vote in if they are under 18. I only used 4 colours in my front cover because that was one of the conventions I found with magazine covers. In the bottom corner of my cover I put a plug saying that there are offers and discounts in the middle pages. I put the plug in the bottom-right corner because that is where people naturally put their hand when opening the page to avoid covering any text on the next page with their hand.

          In my magazine I came up with the title myself to avoid breaking any copyright laws. I named it College magazine because I wanted the audience to know what the general idea was in my magazine. I wanted to call it C magazine but I thought it might be a bit too brief and people might confuse it for a music magazine such as Q. I also incorporated Wyke College into my main story by saying “Wyke Sixth Form College student sets her sights for Oxford”. I put ‘Wyke Sixth Form College’ and ‘Oxford’ in bold to draw attention to them because Oxford is famous for being one of the country’s top performing universities and Wyke isn’t known world-wide for being one of the best colleges and you expect most of the students at Oxford to have been privately educated.

          My specific target audience are college students or year 11 students who are planning on starting college in the next academic year. This is because children younger than that aren’t worried about what college they are going to go to or what A-levels they want to do yet and people older than my target audience will be more interested in university magazines or work related magazines. A secondary audience could be parents of college students so that they know what actually happens in colleges but I wouldn’t bother making a section for the parents because I feel that it would be too small of a section that it would be pointless and could make students not want to read the magazine anymore.

          The girl in the image on my cover is dressed smartly which gives the impression of a friendly community within the college. This is good because it will sway undecided year 11 students more towards this college rather than a college that would use somebody stood in a track-suit which would make the readers feel like it would be quite a rough college and make them not want to study there. By using a girl in my image I have also made it more appealing to both male and female students because males will want to come to the college because there are a lot of girls studying there and girls will also want to come to this college because they will have more friends than a college with more male students. In my skyline I have put in an interview with the cast of skins to appeal to my specific target audience. This is because most teenagers either enjoy the show or have at least seen a few episodes and will want to find out about more of their college stories. In the background there are a couple of people who appear to be holding hands which gives the impression that the college is a good place to come for relationships which could appeal to some of the people reading my magazine.

          Overall I think that my magazine cover looks good and will appeal to my specific target audience. I think that the colours will be more appealing to girls than to boys but boys will still buy the magazine for the other stories displayed.  

Original front cover design

Initial ideas spider diagram

3 existing college magazines

word mock-up of front cover and contents page

Initial ideas

mood board

LIIAR analysis of front cover and contents page

Contents page: The language on the cover of this magazine is suggesting that Kings of Leon are breaking through from performing in small music bars into the professional world of music to play main stages. The image helps suggest this because they are smashing through a pane of glass which could be a metaphor for the barrier between being an unheard of band and a signed act. The facial expressions given by the band members look excited but deterministic. This shows that although they are excited that they have been given a record deal they aren’t going to take it lightly and will continue to work on their music. The background of the image is grey which is a very dull colour and could be used as a metaphor for their dull past. In the image they are breaking the glass to get through and get away from their dull pats and into their bright new future. At the top of the page it says “The 50 BEST ALBUMS of 2008” the words “50 BEST ALBUMS” are written in red which is a colour that people’s eyes are naturally drawn to so people will see this straight away. Those words are also in capitals whereas the other words are in lower case because the 50 best albums is the key part of the story so this is the part of the story that the editor wants the reader to see. The Killers is also in red which can be portrayed as quite a playful colour which matches the rest of the story, “play time for the killers”.

             The company displayed on the cover is Q. The logo is shown at the top of the first third which is where most logos are for magazines so that when they are stacked in shops the logo is still visible and easily recognisable to the audience. There are no other institutions on the cover but the band names could be seen as companies because they are trying to sell their CD’s and other merchandise.           The audience for this magazine would be people aged 14-21 because of the genre of music and the layout of the cover. I think that it would be mainly bought by females although some males would buy this magazine. There are no competitions displayed on the front covert which gives the impression that they are trying to sell the magazine to people slightly older than teenagers. I also think that the band in the main story suggests that the audience will be teenagers or around that age because at the time of release Kings of Leon were a popular band with that age range. The price suggests that the audience would be young as it is £1.90 which is an affordable price for children, teenagers and students.

      Stereotypes used in this magazine would be people the like rock music because the middle band member has a tattoo on his forearm and tattoos are associated with that kind of person. Another  reason that the stereotypes used are mainly people that like rock music is because that is how the Kings of Leon and that genre of music are represented, however the way that the band members are dressed in the image suggests that maybe the magazine is aimed at indies. The way that they are dressed is also quite casual and relaxed which makes it easy for the reader to relate to the band members.

        The ideology of the magazine is good as it conforms to how a magazine cover should look. I think that it looks a bit blank though because there are only 2 side stories and the descriptions of them are spread across the page. This makes the cover look less professional than if they were together. There are no plugs on the cover which doesn’t look right because all of the other covers I have looked at fir research had plugs on them. I think that the fact that there isn’t a plug on the cover adds to the blankness. I do however think that if it weren’t blank that the ‘breaking through’ metaphor might not have worked as it would have appeared as if there was too much happening for one cover. If it was me that designed the front cover I would try to put the side stories closer together, with one on top of the other along the right side of the cover.   

Contents page: There are a lot of images of people in this contents page and all of them are wearing black. This is because the magazine is a rock magazine and rock music is associated with the colour black. The main image is focused on the artist, Slash. There is no text about the story apart from the word, “Slash”. This is because Kerrang! think that the audience will recognise him and without needing to know much about the story will immediately turn to that page to find out. He is taking off his iconic sunglasses with a cheeky looking grin on his face. This is also representative of the rock genre because rock stars are stereotypically badly behaved. He is wearing a leather biker’s jacket because bikers stereotypically are the type of people that listen to Guns N Roses. The text is drawn out because the images are all dark and the text is in light colours.  The word Kerrang! is in a different colour to the rest of the writing which helps the reader identify that that is the title of the magazine. They have used sub-headings in this magazine to highlight the key parts of the magazine e.g. “feedback”, “K! Quiz” and “win!” This will make it easier for the reader to find the page number for the specific parts of the magazine they want to read about. In the bottom left corner there is the editor’s column which tells the reader about what the editor thinks about this week’s issue of Kerrang! I think that Kerrang! Have used a good amount of images because it helps to balance out the ratio of words to images which stops them from making the first page jam-packed full of information and boring the reader.  

Conventions of front covers