Magazine Analysis

Woman Magazine - Cover

This magazine is aimed at females, mainly of adult age (indicated through the title of the magazine 'Women') as that is the age group of the celebrities usually featured. It will attract readers who are interested in celebrity news and gossip, high street fashion, DIY beauty tips and real-life interviews. 

The overall layout of the front cover is very busy and attention-grabbing. It uses lots of different colours and shapes and there is no obvious use of white-space due to multiple photographs and text filling up space. The items on the cover are not precisely organised with no obvious following to a grid. The typography on the front cover includes two types of font. One is a basic sans serif font commonly used on covers of mainstream gossip magazines. The other is a serif font and is used only on the words "Wow!" and "Woohoo!" to encourage such a reaction from the audience on first glance. The biggest text on the cover is the title of the magazine, at the top of the page, helping to make the brand more memorable. The letters in the title 'Woman' are kerned very close together and are all the same height to use up all of the space possible across the top. The hierarchy of text on the cover goes in order of size as the eye is drawn to the biggest text first (which is there to initially draw in readers) and then will focus in on smaller text (which gives more detail on the topic in the magazine). The biggest text on the cover is "A New Sue!", a rhyming short and snappy minor sentence in all capitals, and it is prominent on the cover to link it with the cover-photo and advertise the main article inside.

The mise-en-scene in the cover-photo gives me the impression of event photography rather than celebrity portraiture or candid photography as the background does not seem to be a studio set but instead outdoors at an award show or premiere red carpet. This means that the celebrity would've been very made-up in preparation for the press photos. The pose is not overly arranged, it looks more natural as if they were simply walking down the carpet or stopped to stand for the press photographers and improvised a pose of their own choice. The celebrity is well-lit, like they would be at a red carpet, but as professionally as it would be if they were in a studio doing a photo-shoot.

The cover uses loud, bright colours that are very attention grabbing. It sticks to a clashing colour scheme of a bold pink and an almost luminescent orange, giving it a vibrant and garish look. The pink also reinforces the female target audience. The text is all in either black or white to stand out and ensure legibility against the colourful backgrounds.

The ornamentation used on the cover includes shapes such as rectangles and circles that give a background or frame to text, photos and sub-titles. The decoration added to the small photos of items of clothing at the bottom of the cover are given a white, jagged-edged frame to give a cut-out look. This style of ornamentation that is often used in fashion articles/magazines because it reflects the idea of collecting pieces of clothing from a range of places and mix-and-matching.

More than one photograph is used on this cover. The most important one is the most prominent on the page, the cover-photo, as it is the biggest and all of the text and the smaller photos circle around it. Other images include another photo of the same celebrity from the past to emphasise comparison. 

The pullquote "How I got revenge on my cheating husband!" is included to draw the reader in with a quote that sums up one of the articles and intruiges the audience.

Elle Magazine - Cover

This magazine is aimed at females of a slightly younger age than that of Women Magazine. It suits both teenager girls and adult women due to the kind of celebrities and fashion it features that make it accessible to both age groups. However, it is much more high-end and so will attract readers more interested in high-end fashion, designer clothes, photo-shoots and interviews with celebrities.

The overall layout of the cover is sleek, simplistic and monochrome. There is not much actual content on the cover (just one photograph and some text), so the design and layout of it becomes very important. It only uses black, white and a splash of pink. It is not busy or overly cluttered and white-space has been used to reinforce this simplicity.  A grid can be quite clearly seen in the layout of the items on the cover as a lot of straight lines are used in the design (the alignment of the text and the position of her body). The typography used is all rather thin apart from the title of the magazine at the top, drawing the most attention. Two types of fonts are used. One is a thin sans serif font that is used only in capitals and used mainly for sub-titles, a simple and trendy style to make cover lines stand out. The other is a thin serif font used in capitals and italicised, a classy style often used in high-end fashion magazines. The page is not over-cluttered with text to keep it minimal and neat. The title of the magazine is the biggest text on the page and fits across the top of the cover. The letters in "Elle" are kerned with large spaces in between them to create more white space. The eye is firstly drawn to the title and so this helps the name/brand of the magazine become memorable and recognisable. The eye is then drawn to the second biggest text on the cover, "The Best Dresses", which uses a superlative ("best") in order to persuade the reader that the content of the magazine is great and worth reading.

The mise-en-scene within the cover photo tells me that it was taken as part of a photo shoot in a studio set. I can tell this from the white background and the professional lighting and the obviously posed body language. This means that the celebrity modelling would have been very made-up for the photo shoot with professional make-up, hair styling and wardrobe that follow the sleek and classy theme. The celebrity is being made to look very high-end and chic and has a model-esque expression on her face as if to gain respect and show ability in modelling, a different representation of her in her music career.

The colour scheme of the cover is very monochromatic yet attractive. It has a white background and the text mainly black with some splashes of pink to add in some bright colour to the cover and make it more interesting as plain black and white may not attract much attention in a shop. The pink also tends to its target audience of females. Even the cover photo of the celebrity sticks to this colour scheme with the white dress, pale skin, light blonde hair with splashes of pink on her lips and shoes. Keeping consistant with a colour scheme, even a very simplistic one like this, adds to the quality and professionalism of the layout.

No ornamentation is included on this cover. This is because it has been stripped down to the bare essentials, a minimalistic design, and so ornamentation such as shapes would not fit well with this style.

Some institutional information is included, such as the usual barcode and price, but also the website for Elle. It is presented rather subtly on the cover, within the first letter E on the title to keep from cluttering the cover.

No pull-quote was included because the magazine tends to focus on fashion and style rather than celebrity interviews.

Woman Magazine - Double-Page Spread

The layout of this double-page spread from Women's magazine is busy, like the front cover, with no use of white-space. Titles, images and articles fill up all of the available room on the pages to get in as much content as possible. This content includes lots of photographs and typography of different sizes and styles. The colours used are loud and bold and make the page look very bright.

The most noticeable piece of typography included on the spread is the article title "The Rejuvenistas who've never look better!". putting it at the top of the hierarchy of text on the spread. The font used is the typical serif font commonly used in women's magazines. The colours used on it help to make it stand out, the white stands out against the pink background and the black stands out against the white shape behind this one word. High-lighting the word 'Rejuvenistas' makes the article more eye-catching because is an unusual word and immediately tells the reader the basic jist of what the article is about. This is an important technique because if the reader we to quickly flick through the magazine, their eyes would land on the biggest text there (the title) and so they are told the topic straight away without needing to read further into it. The first letter of the article is pulled out and made large to encourage the audience to read the article. It is the same pink as the background to keep it consistent with the colours used. There is also a pullquote on the second page of the spread with oversized pink speech marks around out, giving the reader hints towards the content of the article. It is placed within the middle of the article, between the columns to link it with the article itself.

All of the photography in the double-page spread is similar to the photo on the front cover in that they all appear to be front a red carpet event and not posed in a studio with professional lighting. This means that, because they have not been specifically placed by a photographer, the photos are a more accurate representation of the celebrity and how they themselves want to be perceived because they choose their expression and pose. The biggest picture on the page is of the same celebrity on the cover and appears to be from the same red carpet event. It is a full length photograph to show her outfit and includes the background to show where it was taken. Her face is near the title to draw a link between the two and show tat she is the main subject of the spread. This is also shown from the size of the picture, it is the biggest and so high up in the hierarchy on the spread. The other pictures do not have their background included, making it look like a collection of cut-outs. a technique commonly used on magazines.

There is quite a lot of ornamentation included on this spread. It is used to give backgrounds of different colours to a word in the title or to part of the article. It acts as a visual aid to help separate the articles form its surrounding images/text and help the reader differentiate between the different articles on different topics. The shapes used for the ornamentation are wonky squares and rectangles, they are wonky to continue the cut-out style used on the photos of the celebrities. There are squares of text that have been placed on top of each celebrity photo on the one section of the article, and this placement was used to link the text to the picture.

The colour scheme of the spread is slightly similar to that of the front cover but less fluorescent and colourful, to give it some class. It stays with black, white and two shades of pink, making it feminine and easy to look at for reading the article. The text is either black or white on the spread, the easiest colours to read on these contrasting backgrounds. Despite it not using as many garish colours as the front cover, it is still rather eye-catching as it bold and the colours go well together.

Elle Magazine - Double-Page Spread

This double-page spread from Elle magazine is similar to the front cover in its simplistic and monochromatic style. This spread has very little content for more condensed, minimalistic design. Photography and typography have both been used here to represent the interviewed celebrity in a way that shows class with modern style.

The most prominent piece of typography on the spread is the title "Kylie Forever". This title takens up a large proportion of one of the pages to show its importance and to draw in the reader's attention. Is it placed exactly horizontal, and the font used is sans serif, very thin and simple, giving it a modern look. All of the text on the page is in black except for the word "Forever" in order to highlight it, adding more stress and certainty to the word. The text underneath the title is less important and would not immediately draw in readers and so does not need to be on show as much. For this reason, it is much smaller and has been italicised to add emphasis, which works well with the rhetorical question at the end of the sentence  These three lines are also in a different font, a serif font, which looks classy and follows the conventions of usual fashion magazine typography styles.

The colour scheme of the double-page spread is very monochromatic, with only white, grey and black used. The only splash of colour comes from the celebrity in the photo (especially from the pink of her lipstick) which helps to make her stand out against the very clean background and highlight and draw attention to her skin on-show.

The photograph used is from a professional photo shoot with a photographer, shown from the photography credits placed at the bottom of the page. I can tell from the look of the photo that it would've been shot in a studio with props and professionally lit. The photo has stuck to a very monochromatic theme, keeping it clean and sleek with lots of straight lines and sharp angles (in both her pose and the prop she is leaning on). The celebrity posing has been very made up, with her hair styled, make-up done and clothed in high-end wardrobe, possibly designer. The styling of the celebrity stays with the monochromatic theme. It is very similar to the photograph used on the front cover as it is from the same shoot, however the biggest difference is her body language and facial expression. Here she has given a much more dramatic, sultry pose, whereas on the cover she looks to be more open and welcoming to draw in readers on first glance.

Some ornamentation has been used with the small, black text underneath the title. White blocks have been placed behind the lines to make them stand out more against the plain background. Also, it gives it that cut-out look often seen in fashion magazines. It makes the text more interesting to look at/read compared to if it were just against the grey background of the photograph.

No pull-quotes were used on this double-page spread because it acts as an introduction or title-page for the celebrity's interview on the following pages.

Conclusion

Overall, these two magazines contrast with each other a great amount. They are both women's magazines that cover topics such as celebrities, fashion and beauty but represent themselves very differently and aim for different audiences. One is very loud, vibrant and talkative. The other is very minimalistic, high-end and subtle. For the audiences they are targeted at, they use techniques very effectively to draw in these specific sorts of readers. Both of the magazines use celebrity gossip and high-street shopping tips to catch a reader's attention but they advertise them very differently: Woman using large, bold text that fills up lots of space using lots of colours; Elle using thin text surrounded with white space and much less colour. The graphic design of the magazines very much reflects the sort of reader it wants to attract, and so all of the decisions made in the design process of the cover and the content were made to tend to their target audience's preference of style: bold or subtle.