'Look' is a very well known magazine aimed at an audience of teenage and young adult of the female gender. The mast head is the biggest text featured on the cover so that it can be easily recognised. The magazine fashion based, shown in the strap line situated above the title of the magazine, 'Glossy High Street Fashion Weekly'. The image of Jennifer Aniston seems to be the main focus of the cover as all the other features are placed around her, so that she is dominating over the rest that is going on. She is not looking at straight at the audience and she looks as though she is dressed to impress, which suggests the image has been captured whilst she was attending an event of some sort.The main headline reads, 'The HOTTEST celebrity news!', written bigger and bolder in comparison to the other text around. The words are written across Jennifer's body indicating that they used this particular celebrity because people associate her as being an 'A-list' celeb. The head line suggests the magazine is very celeb orientated covering a range of different stars as it does not state a particular one.
There is a lot going on in this cover compared to magazines that just use one image and some text like 'Secondary Teachers'. In the bottom left hand corner a white background is used making the image and text much sharper and stand out more. Opposite this is a feature advertising true life stories, which shows the magazine reaches out to a wider audience to than just to those who are only interested in fashion and celebrities.
Blender magazine is a very popular magazine aimed at an audience interested in the music industry, and the artists involved. Britney spears appears to be the main focus on this cover, as she over powers everything else featured, so much so that she is placed over the letters 'N' and 'D' from the mast head that's supposed to read 'Blender'. This shows that the magazine is one of a very popular nature as the company believe they can afford to not show the full title assuming everyone will still know what the magazine is actually titled.Recently Britney Spears has received a lot of bad press and the events of her life have been displayed through the media but there has been no real conclusion what will become of her. Which is why i believe she is the chosen storyline. The by-line attached to her reads 'HOW WILL IT END?' with an arrow pointing to her image saying special report. This will attract readers attention as the public are very interested when the lives of celebrities appear to be falling apart. The Mickey Mouse ears hat full of cigarettes and tab ends and empty beer can, represents the drastic changes Britney has gone through in her career, as she started out starring in the Mickey Mouse Club, an innocent children's t.v show and is now shown to be starring on the front of a magazine cover in nothing but a bed sheet.
The only text colours used are black and yellow, which may seem boring and not very eye catching but they are against a white background creating a very bold effect which grabs your attention as the text appears much sharper which would catch the readers eye. Along the right hand side of the cover the text appears in a list format, stating the content of the magazine, including things like interviews with artists and backstage stories etc. The artists names are written in bold text to draw attention to them, as readers may be more likely to buy it if it is made clear who will be featured inside.
In comparison to 'Look' magazine the cover is not as busy in the sense that it only has one image dominating the cover, uses less colour variation and excluding mast head and main headlines the other text is kept to selected colours and smaller size so it is not in your face jumping out at you. However each individual style serves the same purpose.
This particular magazine is aimed at students (the lower end of my target audience)interested in sport as reflected through the masthead,'SCHOOL SPORT'. The main image focus is of Johnny Wilkinson kicking a rugby ball during a match. He has become the main image focus by the blurred background effect, that has been created so that the rugby star stands out from the background of the cover, whilst still being part of the same image. The cover suggests this particular magazine is aimed more at the male gender as rugby generally appeals more to the male species.As Johnny Wilkinson is possibly the most famous English rugby player, the ambitions of many teenage males would to be just like Johnny Wilkinson. Therefore the target audience maybe more likely to be interested in buying the magazine when they see this rugby player on the front cover.
The text colours are kept to a minimum of white, yellow/amber and black, similar to those used on the cover of Blender magazine. I think this textual colour scheme was kept simple to contrast everything going on in the background of the cover. As in all the magazines i have analysed and is usually the case in all other magazines the masthead is made to be the biggest and boldest piece of text so that it can easily be identified by the reader. In order to stand out from the rest and grab the attention of the readers eye.
Across the bottom is a thin strip of white on black (wob). The wob draws in the readers eye creating the text to stand out and appear very sharp as to attract the readers attention, which is why this is where the content of the magazine is advertised. The sub-headlines highlight the main features of what can be expected in that issue and likewise of both Look and Blender this text is situated around the image making it the main focus.
In conclusion, through the analysis of all three of the above magazines i have found that the media key concepts are all applied to each in their own individual way, yet are very similar to each other. The layouts all follow the same concept of arranging text around the dominating image and each are very representative of their target audience, fashion, music and sport. By using such a range of different magazine types i have shown that no matter how different the content of the magazine the same idea is applied to all the covers.
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