Magazine research

Our first task was to create a school magazine. This was our preliminary task. At first we looked at two diffrent magazines. The two magazines I compared was Men's Health and Health and Fitness. The reason we did this was so that we could tell what makes a good front cover and so we could get used to the types of terminology that we would be coming across in this AS course.

The first magazine that I will be talking to you about is ‘Men’s Health”. The main image on this magazine is of a mid twenties man who is wearing a plan t-shirt and some jeans. The shot is a mid shot as you can see his entire torso. the man’s head is over the masthead which also shows that he is the main focus point of this magazine. The motto for this magazine is “you. Improved”. This shows that you could be like the men in this magazine if you improved your life style. The main cover line is “Fight fat & win in just 3 days a week”. This shows that the main article is about how to get slimmer and possible look like the man on the front.

You can tell that this is a men’s health magazine because nearly all the cover lines are about how men can look better. Also the name of the magazine gives it away. Although this front cover brakes the rule of only three different colours it is still easy to read it all and still stands out. I think that the main reason this is still easy to see is because the background is white. As this is a plan colour, you tend to focus on the not so plan colours so although you can see four colours as the main colour is white it is not so obvious.

This magazine looks at similar issues as Men’s Health but this is aimed at women. This magazine is called “Health & Fitness”. The main image on this Health and Fitness is of a woman in her early twenties again. I think the main reason why health magazines are aimed at mid twenties to late thirties is because that is when your body is at its peak. The picture covers up a tiny bit of the masthead but it still means that you can see all the title. The main cover line is “Beach Body Blitz”. This show that it is a summer issue and that the magazine is going to tell you how to look good on the beach for summer.

This magazine has only got 3 main colours so it is another feature to show that it is well designed.