Complete Analysis of a Magazine Front page

Task

Complete a thorough textual analysis of the music magazine you have chosen from the previous class slideshow (some of the research will already have been done for you).  Choose a different one from the one  you did an audience profile for.

The analysis should include the following:

1) A description of their target audience.

  • To help you, you should use YouGov profiles lite
  • Another way to help you understand the target audience (of a commercial media product) is to look at the adverts within it.
    • Not the ads on their websites, (those are generate by cookies that help web companies follow you and give you personalised adverts), but the adverts they put inside the magazine (if you can find those).
    • You should also refer to the attached audience segmentation document to help identify a suitable classification for the target audience.

2) You should also explain their brand, which is defined in their mission statement.


(If you understand the audience and the brand this will help you unpick the design. The designers and editors will have had the audience and brand at the heart of their decision making and so should also be at the heart of your textual analysis.)


3) Identify & label the design elements of the front page (see previous post for help).

4) Consider how those design elements are shaped to communicate meaning, which will reflect the brand and mission statement – look for the signs, symbols, colours, fonts, framing, MES, facial expression, body language, language etc that have been used to convey a narrative, to represent a genre, to sell a brand).

Here is an example from a previous student that includes some very detailed observations:

This is the format we would like you to follow and use the sub-headings included. Some of the sections can be bullet pointed or lists, but others will require some analysis to include the terms: represents, implies, suggests, signifies etc when doing a textual analysis.

Use this link so that you can take a copy of the slideshow and insert your own image and do your analysis.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *