College magazine cover textual analysis

College magazine cover textual analysis

Here we have a college magazine called ‘College Lifestyle’, and this issue happens to be from summer 2009. It features a Jamaican dancehall deejay called Jeffery Campbell, also known as ‘Assassin’. Jeffrey is pictured holding a law, business and society book, along with others that we cannot see. The magazine uses various bright colours, including a splash of pink along with the main colour used being a green-yellow colour, the cover does also feature a dark black/ grey background. Around the edges of the cover we find a variety of different articles that all happen to be the kinds of things that students will be interested.

When looking into what colours we find on the page, we see that there is black background with a light shining in the centre, giving it a brighter feel. In contrast to the dark background, we have a bright green/ yellow coloured text, which stands out massively from the background. We do also have a pink splat to the right hand side of the page which again stands out from the darker background, and this leads us to read what is on the splat which happens to be an advertisement for paintballing, which relates to the nature of the splat.

When we look into what we find on the magazine, we see Jeffery immediately, and this is because he is featured directly in the middle of page, and this is done to draw attention to him, and draw in possible customers because he may be seen as quite a cool person, who people like, and seeing him on the cover may make them want to pick it up and read it, which is something that all magazine producers want. Jeffery is wearing a black jacket, with black jeans, a white t-shirt along with a rather large silver chain. What he is wearing would normally be considered quite ‘trendy’ and ‘cool’, which is something that the generation in which the magazine is aimed at can relate to. He also happens to be looking directly down the camera which may be done in an attempt to connect the reader to magazine, and again make them want to pick it up and have a read.

When we take a closer look at some of the feature articles, we find that they are all very relatable for teens and general college students, just from a first glance, which again is something in which they have done purposely in an attempt to get college students to want to pick it up and read it.  

All of the fonts that they have used here are very simple, sans serif fonts, making it very easy to read, and even from a distance, the feature headlines are rally rather easy to read, this is probably helped along with the fact that the colours go along well with the background .