Research and Planning, Task Two (2)

Magazine Cover Analysis

  The chosen magazine cover is the September issue of ‘Company’. The name of the magazine is clearly visible as the masthead in a coral pink shade which is a colour associated with females between the ages of 16 to 25; this clearly shows which group of target audience this magazine is made for. With the simplicity of the “Bebas Neus” as the font of the masthead, this big, easily readable and recognisable font shows sophistication which will allow the target audience to pick up this magazine once they take a glance at the cover. Not only can the fresh colour of coral pink be found on masthead, it is also the predominant colour which is seen throughout the front cover along with black and lilac, this colour scheme keeps the magazine uniformed and professionally looking, which will appeal to the target audience as they would also feel polished.

  There are a couple of small parts on the magazine cover which cannot be disregarded, which are the dateline and the price. The dateline can be found on every magazine cover as it allows the audience to see when this magazine was released, and if it was newly released, they would most likely to buy it in order to keep up to date with the latest news in the magazine. The price is also a very important matter that should be placed on the front of every magazine because it shows how much this magazine costs; they generally keep it at the same price for every issue to prevent confusion for the target audience. ‘Company’ is sold at the price of two pounds each, which will attract the target audience because it is rather cheap and the group of target audience will most likely to have at least a sum of two pounds coins lying around.

  There are taglines to show what is in the magazine, this will appeal to the target audience as they allow them to know the main contents of the magazine and some special articles that will be in the magazine and also the insight of them, if the taglines are interesting enough, the target audience will want buy the magazine. The taglines have a consistent font used in every issue of ‘Company’; this also allows the magazine to be easily recognisable.

  The eye-catching puffs and plugs are placed around the front cover to highlight some of the interesting articles that will attract the target audience. In this case, “summer street style” is not only placed on the left third of the magazine that will be the first thing they see when they pull this out from horizontal shelving, it also clearly indicates what will be main articles in this issue of ‘Company’. This leads the audience to be intrigued to read on and therefore buy the magazine.

  Last but not least, the main image of Whitney Port makes up at least fifty percent of the front cover; she is a celebrity who has gained popularity recently, this will appeal to the audience as they will feel like they need to know about the latest news on this new celebrity, which brings them to purchase this magazine.