Making a magazine front cover 1

Evaluation:

Use of the image - I decided to use this image due to the composition being the most popular and general camera view for people centred magazines. The model is also looking into the camera which is a meta or self referential code due to the acknowledgement that an audience is reading the magazine. I find that this increased the interactivity between the magazine and reader. The model is an explicit code of a college student, wearing a college lanyard, a hoodie and is young in age, these all combine to form an indexical sign of a college student. The target audience would clearly be able to understand the context and topic of the magazine from this, thus increasing its appeal to the target audience, young teenagers looking into college or requiring information for college in general.

The font I used in the magazine front cover is Adventurer Black SF. A convention of modern magazine covers are large, bold, sans serif fonts in order catch the readers attention and seem modern; the convention of modern being clean, crisp, relatively simplified and monochrome. I followed this convention as I feel to a target audience, that are going into generally new, modern colleges this might appeal more than artistically fluid fonts due to the magazine cross referencing with modern colleges and their designs.

In the features I included top and bottom designed borders that avoided touching the model as much as possible to keep the image of the model as the larger selling point of the magazine. I included said model in order to attract the attention of the target audience. I also used a large masthead in order to clearly state the category of the magazine cover. I decided to use red as a code for the magazine due to the model being quite warm in lighting, and that red is quite a striking colour which appeals more to the younger audience due to younger people being more entertained or interested in bright colours rather than dull or quiet colours. This also links to the fact that the magazine is intended to be quite modern and modern is the idea of new.

The masthead of the magazine is clean and of a conventionally followed idea of modernism. I feel this would apply to the target audience because it explicitly states the grouping of the magazine, education, and is specific. The magazine is aimed for utilisation, it is not an entertainment magazine as it is intended to inform the audience. I find that informing magazines are more likely to appeal to the target audience as it doesn't have to jump through holes to appeal to the audience in terms of entertainment, but is merely meant to teach and give information, facts and knowledge which thus should not contain an opinion and therefore is less likely to have an opposed reading.