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.