Prem Coursework - Magazine Research

In today’s lesson I researched and studied the main attributes for a magazine cover and thought about the decisions made behind magazine covers and the way they are. I looked at: Font, Style, Contexts and colors and how the convey a magazine cover. In addition to this, I looked at how different magazines are aimed a different people and genders. For example the way that Console magazines are aimed at gamers and mostly males.

Task 1- research task

For this task I researched different magazine covers and answered 4 questions:

What is the style?

What is the context?

What are the colours?

After researching different magazines I decided to do an evaluation on three contrasting magazines. Classic rock, PC pro and NOW magazine.

What is the STYLE? First of all I distinguished type of magazines they both were. I saw that PC Pro was a very formal, informative magazine which fitted it purpose perfectly as it is a computer magazine and needs to be formal to get its information across as it has to be accurate. Classic rock was a very entertaining, medium level formality magazine. Classic rock aims at music fans and the front cover wasn’t too formal as it had punch lines. Now magazine is a very informal gossip magazine that has a very ‘mum’ feeling to it is a gossip magazine that includes celebs that looks like it would appeal to mothers. With styles also comes an age range and gender affiliation to which the magazine aims at. By looking at the front cover of the magazine cover only I came up with a 20-45 year old range for PC pro magazine which is aimed at men. Classic rock is aimed at men of about 18-40 years old and Now is aimed at woman ranging between 16-50.

What are the COLOURS? Next question I answered looked at the colour used on the magazine fronts. I saw that PC Pro used a very bright coloured background and used contrasting colours to make everything clear on the page. A range of whites, blacks, reds and yellows were used. Classic Rock used more dark colours like black a greys and was contrasted by gold’s and whites and yellows which made the text and title stand out. Now magazine used a range of bright quirky colours such as purples, reds, light blues and yellows. I also noticed that these colours were very feminine reinforcing that it is aimed at woman. All the colours used for the magazine covers made the image of the magazine very attractive and appealing.

What are the CONTENTS? For this I looked at everything that was one the front covers of my chosen magazines. PC Pro had an image of many laptops clearly showing what the topic of the magazine was. Also the text was clear and I noticed that the title was in a box at the top left hand corner of the magazine. The Font used was very blocky and compliment the style of the magazine. Classic Rock had its title in gold lettering at the top of the page and had an iconic picture of a rock star which was the main focus of the magazine around it the text was based and contrasted the dark lettering with brighter colours. Now magazine had pictures of celebrities and very easily recognizable people which were deliberately used to catch he attention of people. Also the title of the magazine was big and covered the top of the page. also all the fonts around it was big clear I found out that now uses a Helvetica font which is very clear and bold, which catches the eye.

In this lesson, I purely looked at the magazine covers and learnt that everything on a magazine there is meant is done on purpose for a purpose. Even size, for example, is all done on purpose.