Bodmin College Magazine Analysis

Target Audience

The target audience for the Bodmin college magazine is mainly for students, which are in the age range of 11-19, but it also for teachers, parents and Guvenors, which are in the B1 classification.

Masthead

In terms of denotation, the masthead is a shockingly bad example of a magazine heading, the text is hard to read and unclear, the typography is very sophisticated so it doesn’t really appeal to the youth that it is trying to appeal to. The masthead also doesn’t have a strapline to catch the eye of readers and the masthead itself is unoriginal and is not appealing to students. The design at the top of the magazine also has no relevant connection to the students because it is a picture of corn, which doesn’t really connote that the magazine is for youth and so is not attractive to the target audience.

Layout

The layout is bland and features three main pictures that are poorly taken. The pictures show that the magazine is mainly for female dance students and that is the only connection between them. The main attraction of the magazine should be one central image, which is relevant to students, and have some smaller images around the bottom featuring some smaller stories or teasers for what is in the magazine, but it lacks this and so is not attractive to the target audience.

Colour

There is no colour coordination on the page; it features over 15 different colours which is overwhelming to any reader and this is certainly not going to get students to read it, more likely repel readers, and the overall design of the magazine does not attract attention to one main image but instead makes the reader not know where to look, and the colour scale is not going to attract the primary target audience and certainly not the secondary target audience, it’s like someone had a paint pallet full of bright colours and just threw it at the page.

Imagery

The main pictures on the front cover are all of the female dance groups, (Mulvey 1975) this may have been an attempt by the producer to attract male and female audiences, females because they might like dance and males because they want to look at girls, mainly in an erotic way, this though, does not appeal to the sixth form because the pictures are of ‘little kids’ which is not going to attract any attention from the secondary target audience and will probably repel the main target audience as well. The images are mainly blurred in appearance and poorly merged.

Typography/Text

The first thing the text denotes is that there is no issue number; no teaser or straplines and the text itself is hard to read and blurred by the background colour, the text itself is in comic sans which should never be on a magazine even if it is a college magazine. The text doesn’t appear to appeal to any target audiences and instead alienates anyone who doesn’t like dance.

In terms of the common conventions of a magazine, it doesn’t apply to either target audience and the overall theme of the magazine is misdirected with to many colours, bad presentation in terms of layout, poor pictures, blurred text and a bland masthead, this is not the way to attract their target audience.