Analysis Of College Magazines

I’m going to analyse two magazines cover, which are for Bodmin College, a student designed one and one was designed by the schools sectary. The primary target audience for these magazines would be students and the secondary would be parents.  It would appeal to both genders but although the main aim is to inform students and teachers the main target audience would be 11-19.  The magazines covers are pitched to middle class to upper class. 

Analysing the covers:

This magazine is not a professional magazine cover. Firstly this magazine is missing a lot of the common codes and conventions; this includes a masthead, barcode/price, main image, colour theme and Text. 

The masthead on this magazine is very poor as you can't really tell where it is which is bad as you really want your masthead to stand out and dominated the top half of the magazine cover so this is not something you would expect to see on a magazine cover. As I said before you would normally expect the masthead to dominate the top of the magazine cover but it doesn't in this case as it is to small and the colour does not work either as it doesn't catch your eye.                           One and if not the most important part part of a magazine cover is a main image which is one image which dominates the whole cover. It would normally be a medium close up of a relevant person or item but here we have three images of all similar sizes and none are a medium close up either. You would normally expect to see smaller images surrounding the main image. Also the quality of these images are very low, they are very blurry and not very focused. On a professional magazine cover you would expect the image quality to be at the highest standard and to be the main focal point for the target audience. Looking at those images they all seem to be about people dancing or performing arts. This wouldn't apply to the whole target audience as some people may have no interest in them what so ever. 

Moving on to the layout of the cover, as you can see it has not followed the common conventions of a magazine cover. On a professional magazine cover you would expected to see the main image dominating the centre of the cover with a large bold masthead above and a few images and texts surrounding that, but as you can see thats not the case here. In most professional magazines they have a image or a short segment of text in the 'SweetSpot' which is what your eyes first see. Here there is no text or anything to really draw your target audience in.

The second Magazine cover I'm going analysis follow most/all of the common codes and conventions. Although I find the the cover itself confusing to see precisely what  the target audience for this cover is. I would say it is more likely to be aimed at student than adults. I would also presume that this magazine is aimed at both genders.
Starting with the masthead again it is central and bold with gives it a strong and powerful look and makes it stand out from the background. The colour of the masthead is also matching the rest of the theme of the cover so it gives it a successful look. I think that the smokey effects around the masthead give it more of edge and its definitely more eye catching but also backs up my point when I thought the target audience was for teenagers. I think that the actually name of the magazine 'Skive' gives it a rebellious look and sounds interesting to read more on. A lot of teenagers would be drawn in my the name of this magazine so that also backs up my reason for this magazine being for teenagers. 
Layout wise, this cover is a millions times better as it has text in the 'SweetSpot' which was not on the last cover and there is also smaller images and little bits of texts surrounding the main image such as teasers and whats inside. This really lifts the cover up as there is less 'Dead Space'. This is when there is a lot of empty space on the cover. 
Also we finally we have just one main image which makes the cover look a lot better. Before there was three main images which gave the cover a very confusing look and didn't look professional at all. On this cover there is a close up of a female figure with a cold look to it which suits the theme of the overall cover very well. The picture quality of this image is a lot better which improves the focal point for the target audience.