College magazine analysis

By Michael Becker

Denotation

The magazine is called “College Life”. There is a medium shot of a young female who would be the right age to go to college and she has been dressed up to look like a student with glasses and a stack of books. It is clearly targeted to college students. The masthead consists of 2 main colours and is in the conventional position. The cover has 4 main colours with off-set colours of the main ones which are:- white, brown, orange and turquoise. It has a selling line in the top left and a dateline in the top right. It has cover lines going down the left hand side and the main cover line at the bottom left. It also has a website address in the bottom left.

Masthead

The masthead is in the conventional position with additional artistic block colours used to make the lighter text standout. As I cant find any other covers for this magazine this could have special colouring for the cover image or this could be the default. The white “COLLEGE” standouts against the orange and brownish- colours and this is used so that the reader knows instantly what the magazine is about. The masthead uses 2 different fonts for different effects. Firstly the sans serif “COLLEGE” is used to show how bold and almost daunting college is and the serif font used for “life” to show sort of a homely and classy feel.

House style

As mentioned before the 4 main colours for the magazine cover are:- white, brown, orange and turquoise. The orange, whit e and brown seem like the main colours for the masthead and then the turquoise is used due to it being used in the cover image but also as turquoise is quite a relaxing colour and due to the stress of college its use seems to be meaningful. This could also be said for the use of orange though it doesn’t have as much of an affect as the turquoise colour.

Cover Image

The cover image is a medium shot and this has been done for 2 main reasons:- 1. so there is room on the page for other content such as the cover lines and 2. so they can have a shot of someone holding books to emphasis the fact that this is a college magazine. The girl is dressed as a stereotypical college student with a pile of books for work and her wearing a pair of glasses possibly showing that she does a lot of work and reading for that. She is also wearing rather bland clothing showing that she doesn’t need to dress up as she's working on her future. The direct mode of address draws the audience in and helps create a link between the audience and the magazine.

Cover line

The cover line is solely to the left hand side and there isn’t really a main cover line as all have equal weighting which does break the conventions of cover lines. The cover line though do have varying designs to match the content e.g. the red lettering and the serif font for the “perfect valentines gift?” which matches the theme of love and the colour red is heavily association with love. They have also included imagery of love with lots of hearts next to the text. The next cover line id like to mention is the “healthy eating” cover line as it uses a lot of different conventions to portray its message across. Firstly they have an image of lots of fruit to portray the healthy message across to the reader and attracts their attention about eating healthy food. Next they use their “college colour scheme” to emphasis the point about eating on a college budget and to relate it to college. Finally they use a greenish colour on the “healthy eating” to symbolise healthy food as the colour green is stereotypically used to show healthy eating.

Additional features

There is a tag line in the top left for additional context. There is a issue number and dateline in the top right so if you’re a regular reader you have context to which issue it is in case there is a running article going on or a certain feature that’s needed every week. There is a website in the bottom left so their readers can have a regular updates from their website.