Conventions- Comparing Covers

So far, I have analysed three magazine front covers: DisCover, Secondary and Young Money. To recap here is a brief overview of the covers. DisCover Magazine had a central image of a woman, just showing her face and hand. The purpose of the magazine was to teach students, of primarily high-school age. The magazine was preparing readers/students for exams, school or college stress and touches on the financial expense of buying stationary and revision books, offering discounts and deals to students and parents.

Secondary Magazine had a front and back cover that had images of a male and female student. The purpose of this magazine was to inform teachers of new ways of teaching and to provide information and statistics about teaching and education across the country. This magazine was not intended for students, but for teachers or perhaps parents.

Young Money Magazine had an image of a woman. The image was the centre picture and she was the first thing a reader sees when looking at the page. This magazine was intended for college or university students who are struggling with managing their money.

The masthead of the magazines were DisCover, Secondary and Young Money. On the cover for DisCover there is a logo for the magazine, the logo is consistent throughout each issue the magazine publishes.

All magazines have subheadings. This is important as it tells the reader what is inside the issue.

Some magazines have advertisements of some sort, DisCover advertises revision books as one of the plugs mentions discounts and money-off vouchers. The Young Money magazine implicitly promotes the clothing that the woman is wearing and the Anchor Woman that is featured in the issue. Secondary Magazine does not advertise because its primary motive is to teach and sell itself in that sense, whereas Young Money and DisCover have another agenda as they have products to sell and promote to readers, e.g. Student Cards, Revision books, stationary etc.

All the magazines also have a central image, all showing students. This must be effective because it portrays the magazines purpose, whether it is teaching/educating college students on financial management, or aimed at teachers and parents.

Analysing Magazines: 3-Young Money

Here I will analyse another magazine front cover. This magazine title is Young Money and its aim is to educate "College students and young adults on money management, careers, investing, financial aid and credit and debt." This magazine has been described as the "leading magazine for college students".

In contrast to Secondary Magazine, Young Money has decided to use a colourful background which is not blank or one-coloured, but shows a street and trees, implying that the woman is standing outside a college or near a housing estate. This background is important as it creates a more natural feel, as though she has been approached on the streets with a camera on her way home from college. If the background was all one colour, or blank white it would have appeared more staged and obviously planned.

The white shirt she is wearing reinforces the educational ideology of a uniform, we immediately associate her as a student. The shirt also makes her stand out, as the white is a contrast to the darker background. Her shirt is unbuttoned, her collar is slightly up and she is wearing a stylish belt and necklace. These all create a more appealing cover for younger people, this is more socially acceptable and also suggests that she has finished her day at college and the smile and active face suggests she may be ready to go shopping; which relates to the aim of the page, money management.

Similar to DisCover magazine, Young Money has a central image of a visually attractive woman. The woman is posing for the picture, smiling and is young. The womans hair is straight, tidy and well-kept creating a more eye-catching picture. Her hair is also slightly wind-swept to show that she is outside.

Language is important in the text for the following reasons. The magazine title Young Money immeadiately targets young people who are perhaps having difficulty managing their money. The text your life, right now also targets the reader straight away, directly making the reader feel involved. The title page shows several purposes of the magazine, "Car Sharing Comes to Campus" tells the reader that the magazine will address managing money to buy cars for college. The use of another person, directly named "Jenna Lee", could perhaps show celebrity status at the college, improving the ideology of the magazine. At the bottom of the page there is a website address www.youngmoney.com and a price, $3.95 and a date. This text is in small font because it is not as important for the magazine, however needs to be on the page.

Analysing Magazines:2- Secondary

Secondary teachers magazine is a magazine dedicated to an informative approach towards teaching and learning alike, using facts and figures to support its points. The magazine has many advantages that encourage people to buy and read its content.

Tho choice of colour is effective as the white background makes the students stand out. White symbolises cleanliness and purity, as well as blankness. This suggests that nothing else is there, just the student raising his hand or holding a pencil. The uniform colour is also effective, the red is more appropriate to place on a white background than if they were wearing a white shirt without a jumper, for example. The minimal amount of colours used on this front page makes the whole piece stand out. On the front page, the page with the male student, the text is mainly blue whereas the back page with the female student has mainly pink text. This is to illustrate social/ideological differences from and the male female students. Pink is usually associated with females and suggests femininity which most teenage/college student age girls aspire to, similarly blue is a more socially excepted colour to be associated with male.

Institution

The front page shows a black student raising his hand, presumably in a lesson as he is wearing a school uniform. The fact that he is black suggests that Wyke is a multicultural college, encouraging a sense of social acceptance for everyone. He is raising his hand, this shows the college institutions idealistic belief that students should actively be enthusiastic towards learning. His facial expressions suggest enthusiasm, happiness and eagerness towards lessons. This contradicts the ideology which is usually portrayed in the media that teenagers of college age are rebellious, outruly and unconcerned with their education.

The girl is looking to her left, away from the readers eye, as though we are watching her chatting with friends. This creates a personal feel for the text and encourages the social ideology. She is also dressed in school uniform and reinforces the ideologies enforces by the educational system.

The question on the front cover "Do boys and girls learn differently?" is effective as it grips the reader and informs them that the question to this will be answered inside. The use of language is important as it sums up the piece of the text, determines whether a reader will read on and can be used to show ideologies and opinions. The use of a rhetorical question causes the reader to think about the question, however does not have to answer it.

The white background suggests blankness, like a clean page, suggesting that fresh starts are available at the college.

Analysing Magazines:1- DisCover

This is a magazine front cover for DisCover Magazine, which is a school learning, educational publication. This design has decided to use a young, attractive female figure as the central image. This encourages the ideology of attractive girls attending the college and represents young people; which is the target audience the magazine is aiming to address.

There are little text on this page. The title DisCover is the most noticeable of the text. The other text is generally describing what the content of the magazine is.

I will analyse this front cover, as well as several others (see later blogs), to come to a decision regarding how to design my magazine cover. This front cover was found using http://www.google.co.uk/ and by clicking on a link appeared on Google Images. The link for this post was found on the link provided.

The colours used on this text are purple, to suggest something "out of the ordinary" and shocking. The colour purple is bright, exotic and interesting. The purpose of this magazine is not immediate just from viewing the front cover briefly, this is both an advantage and a disadvantage. An advantage from this is that readers may read more to find out what the magazine content is. A disadvantage of this is that readers may immeadiately lose interest as it does not follow the usual conventions of a front cover. The title DisCover encourages people to read on and discover what the magazine is about.

The conventions that it does follow is that there is a central image, a barcode, title of magazine and logo.

LIIAR- (using media terminology)

This blog will underline five key terms used as preparation for any media work. The five terms are:

• Language
• Ideology.
• Institution
• Audience
• Representation

LANGUAGE in the media are terms that are specific to the medium that they are associated. Several examples of language terminology that are specified to the media are Masthead, Splash, Plugs, Anchorage and Jump-line. This is important as it creates all the text that is used in the media. This can be seen in magazine front pages, billboards, on the television, the speech used as script for the radio, etc. Denotation and Connotation are also examples of language.

IDEOLOGY in the media is used to create, reinforce and alter aspirations and ideas. Ideology for a Wyke College, for example, would be that it offers aspirations for young people to mature socially and economically, after fulfilling a rewarding course and sustaining a high-paid job. This type of ideology is effective as it targets a specific audience and offers them the belief that they can be in a certain class or social group. E.g. X Factor reinforces the Ideological belief that the everyday member of the public can achieve high potential in the music industry.

Ideological values are displayed both explicitly and implicitly. Explicit values are clearly expressed, for example, Wyke openly states that its aim is to achieve high pass-rates in A levels and make students learn. The implicit values that are expressed would be that Wyke offers many courses from a wide-range of choices and mentors to encourage learning.

INSTITUTION is basically the company, business or person that controls the production of the media product. The promotional or advertising company can affect the final product because, even though they are ordinarily a corporation, they are still presented by people with their own beliefs and ideologies. These beliefs may affect the way the program is presented and the Representations that are portrayed.

The institution that I will use for my College magazine will be Wyke College, written by the students.

AUDIENCE is another example of something I will need to address in my work. The audience I am targeting is 16-18 year olds, who are hoping to attend Wyke, OR who already attend however want a broadened knowledge of the courses on offer at Wyke.

When evaluating what target audience to address you must first take a look at the social structure of the audience. Class is one way of defining this structure. I will not be targeting under-class people because they will not be attending Wyke. Similarly, Upper Class students are most likely not hoping to enroll either. Therefore I should take into accound the fact that my audiences class structure will most likely be Middle-Class.

Key points to make about Audience:

Age- 16-18 year olds for my magazine

Class- Middle/perhaps some lower class

Occupation- Students-mostly unemployed

Gender- Both male and female audience, my magazine should be gender neutral.

This is called S.E.G (Social and Economic Grouping).

REPRESENTATION will be used in my magazine front cover. I will be representing students of college age at 16-18. I will perhaps decided to include a central image of a student who is young and also attractive to represent the ideology of young people. I may decide to represent a student who appears to be from a Chinese ethnic background, for example, to illustrate that Wyke is a multi-ethnic college. Similarly, I could use a white student because the majority of people hoping to attend will be from this ethnic group. The students portrayed shall be represented as eager to learn and also have fun, I may include a picture of students working as a group, laughing, to encourage the feeling of a social acceptance at this College.