Research And Planning: Textual Analysis Of A Magazine Front Cover

The magazine cover I have chosen to evaluate is a popular celebrity/fashion magazine, to show the differences between this genre of magazine and a typical college magazine cover.

The Masthead is the name of the magazine brand and it helps distinguish different magazines from one another. The magazine shown here is a weekly magazine and although the font and size of the masthead are the same each week, the colour scheme seems to vary each week to fit in with the main story on the magazine cover and the other text and images on the cover too. The layout of the front cover stays the same for each issue too.

Front covers of magazines usually include the publishing date of the issue, the issue number, the price usually by the barcode (as shown in the image). This is placed on the cover of the magazine to inform the customers of the information they need. It also shows other magazines how much cheaper they may be.

Usually on the front covers of magazines they have a main image and headline, which is the main attraction and eye-catching part of the magazine cover. In most magazines, including this one, the main image is usually of a famous celebrity who is of big public interest in that moment in time the magazine is published. The reason for doing this is so it grabs the audience’s attention and makes they want to read the magazine as it normally has a main headline to go with it, that uses persuasive language. This magazine uses lots of colourful images and text to catch the audience’s eye.

On this magazine cover there are a lot of articles trailed. These show other bits of information that can be found inside the magazine. They usually use words like “secret” (as shown in bottom right hand corner of the cover) to draw the audience in as they may think they are the only ones to know the secret and it feels exclusive to them. At the top of the masthead there is a persuasive puff stating that the magazine is Britain’s best selling fashion weekly, this is persuasive to the audience because it makes the audience think they are purchasing the best magazine in Britain.