Analysis of Existing Magazines

Because of the genre of magazine I am doing there is not a lot of choice when it comes to comparing another magazine with my own ideas. I have taken this double page spread from a SOURCE magazine to give me a better idea of what my double page spread will look like when it is finished. From looking at this example I can see that my double page spread should involve quite a few pictures as well as large colourful fonts. The main two colours on this spread are blue and pink, this could be because it would appeal more to their target audience, the bright bold colours are eye catching. I will use some bright bold colours in my magazine to make the pages more interesting and will hopefully make the readers more inclined to read the articles on the page and pay full attention to them. The font used on this page is big and bold, this is the first bit of font i saw because of its size and boldness. The way this has been layedout and the images that have been used would really appeal to my target audience.


Now i am going to analyse two front covers to compare to different uses of font, colour etc.











From looking at this example of a front cover (THE SOURCE) I can tell that my magazine should have a big bright and bold Mast head. Although the picture will take up most of the page I think I will still try and squeeze in as many little flash tags as I can to make the page look busy. The main colour used on the front cover of this particular issue of this magazine is red, red is quite a powerful in your face colour. I wont be having just a single main colour on my front cover but I think I will use red on it. The layout used has been used to make the picture more visible than any thing else on the page, I think this because the image over laps the mast head.


From analysing this example of a VIBE front cover I can see that colour is spared, although there hints of the red the main colour/colours are different tints of grey. This sounds plain but in my opinion works very well, it still makes the cover stand out. The picture certainly dominates the page, you can barely see the Mast head but this is acceptable because the reader should already know what the magazine is called. The image, in my opinion is meant to stand out more than anything else, this to me is because it is a picture of Ciara who is pretty famous and very attractive so it would draw readers in.

If compare the two covers with each other there are some differences but I think they are very similar. Both images take up most of the page, but; each uses a different shot, THE SOURCE uses a close up of the upper body of Puff Daddy, where on the other hand VIBE use a medium close up of Ciara's whole body. This is my opinion give off two very different messages, the image of P.Diddy would appeal to anyone interested in hip hop, where the image of Ciara would appeal to a more specific audience young male hip hoppers. Both of these covers use red as their main colour, THE SOURCE uses it more than VIBE, even thought they both use red because of the difference in the background colours it makes them seem incredibly different.

Another difference is the amount of flash tags are used, THE SOURCE use quite a bit more flash tags than VIBE this makes the magazine look flashier but i think there is no need and they have over done it a little. I while be using ideas from both of these examples and incorporating them in to my magazine.



I will finally analyse a content page from VIBE.


Most content pages in my opinion should give the reader a fairly simple way of knowing what is on what page. This content I think is laid out very well, it has an image but the image takes up less than half the page so it keeps the reader interested but it still doesn't dominate the page which means they are able to get the full idea of what is happening on each page. A big heading has been used on the page to probably give the readers an idea of what the picture is representing. There is not a great deal I can say about this content page because it is fairly plain and is just a usual content page, but I can say it is affective and i will probably be using a similar layout in my magazine.