We were given the important task of annotating an unseen magazine cover. I had to analyse what made up the front cover and how it shaped the and portrayed the theme of the magazine, this could be through the masthead, the pug/puffs, the cover lines or even font/typeface. This cover had a black and white theme with a yellow filter to show the topic was older players/bands, as it was also clearly a music magazine. The masthead MOJO was in big writing in behind the main tag line saying “The Music Magazine”. The title is bigger as it is the important thing for us to remember so we can go and buy it again or when we see MOJO advertised we immediately think of that. The main tag line is small as we are meant to know already that it is a music magazine, furthermore if we have read it before we would not want to see that as the main part. I also found various different codes and meanings hidden in the image shown by Roland Bart’s Enigma Code theory. For example the man in the main image is looking directly at the camera showing direct address from him to the reader. Another example would be the fact he is resting his head on his hand showing he is a laid back individual but on the contrary it shows he is a seductive individual who is enticing you into buying and reading the magazine. The main significance of this activity was to know and understand how to analyse a magazine cover, this prepares us to make our own as we will know what to look for in a magazine cover.
Analysing and learning about the audience psychographic takes us further in depth on how to read a magazine cover and the audience they are targeting. Knowing the different kinds of people you can target like Free Birds, or mainstreamers will help in the production of my magazine as I will be able to target audiences specifically. All these skills and information will assist in the making of my magazine. I will be able to more specifically target a set of people (a psycho or Demographic) and create a magazine cover people are interested in.