College Magazine Textual Analysis

This college magazine represents/reflects how young people like this person in society are portrayed. The masthead is “college” in which is in a bold yellow font which connotes a very welcoming and friendly invite to entice the intended target audience into reading/consuming the product.  This is the visual branding of the title and is often done in a specially designed typeface to be recognisable and unique in order for the reader to be able to distinguish and recognise the magazine for its unique characteristic. This gives the effect of drawing in the audience to buy this type of magazine.

Additionally, the bright  yellow colour of the masthead is  complementary to the background colour black as well as the cover lines since they are also a bright yellow colour, this college magazine is consistent within its choice of colour palettes as it only uses yellow, white and black which is conventional to the traditional magazines in retail marketplace.  The masthead is usually used on the contents page inside as well as the front cover, and as a logo for advertising and branding purposes. Furthermore, it would attract consumers who are dedicated and loyal towards the product as when they see the  ‘masthead’ it enables them to automatically identify with the particular magazine persuading the intended target audience to consistently buy the magazine.

The magazine cover lines consist of: ‘Make money on campus’, ‘jump up & wave’ and ‘the world’s sprint factory’. The purpose of the cover line is to give the niche audience a sneak peak as to what products the magazine has got on offer and to also give minimal information on the main articles through the cover lines in order to captivate the attention of the audience, enticing them to read more and also encouraging them to become a loyal customer at the same time.

 The colour of this magazine includes the 3 main colours which are: a yellow/green, black and white. The effect of these three colours indicates the elegance of some shape/form and of a high class kind of smart looking presentation and sophistication of the magazine, it shows the colour of yellow which connote as a welcoming sign to the consumers and more of a warm feeling in which of those who go to college may still be new will be welcomed to this kind of magazine to experience reality. The connotations of the colour black shows how elegance, status, sophistication and powerful a person is in the magazine which also suggests how education is also a powerful and significant feature/aspect in a young adults life ; giving a good representative of college students being optimistic, motivated and  dedicated  these students, young people are in their studies which is shown by the books that he is carrying.

The barcode is displayed at the bottom left hand corner in which is used for retailers so that the sale of the magazine can be easily registered quickly during the purchase. This often has the price labelled next to the barcode so the consumer would know how much it would cost. Also, it would indicate how much the magazine would cost so that they know how much they are paying for this magazine; in this case, the magazine is $4.99 US or $5.99 CAN.

The main cover line in this front cover magazine is ‘Dancehall’s Bright Future’; this is the largest cover line on the front cover. The main purpose of this is that it would display what the magazine mainly consists/revolves about ,  it also uses the intended effect of using ‘BRIGHTFUTURE’ at the same time as using the colour yellow in which interlink and provide a purpose in order to captivate the attention of the target audience by using Big, Bold, Yellow font.

The main image seems to be a young adult aged between 18-20 in which we assume him to be in college; who is appearing to be confident and dressed smart and elegantly to represent college students. Additionally, the person in this magazine is using props, in this case, it is a few law and society books which gave the impression that he is a college student or someone who is at university (depending if it is in the UK or the US). The connotations of books are that they show intelligence, wisdom, independence as well as power. Another prop that is within this magazine is the fact that he is wearing a necklace which is a cross as well as some sort of watch on his left hand. This suggests that this magazine also promotes materialistic objects aswell as giving advice on college.

The denotations of the necklace (cross) would be that it shows it is Jesus Christ sacrifice to replenish human’s sins. The connotations of the necklace are faithfulness, love, loyalty, purity , holy  and life.
The connotations of the watch would be that the person is organised, wealthy, someone of a high status and fashionable.


Additionally, he is wearing a black leather jacket which shows the contrast between his white t-shirt. This shows off his professionalism as well as a simple yet modern perceptive of how young people are portrayed in society.Since he is standing in an up-right posture; implying that he is a satisfied and strong person, with the books empowering his role of being a student. This gives positive stereotypes of being a student, as being hard working and enjoying being a student. This may later indicate later on within the magazine that is promotes the positivity of being a student attending college/university. To add to this, the emotion of this person within the magazine shows signs of happiness and peace which may imply how college is the ‘way forward’ in life, this can be shown through his facial expression.

Furthermore, The positioning of the coverlines are shown to be at the sides in order to act as an anchorage to the main image, but by effectively using consistent variant colours they make the coverlines eye catching.  Cover lines also serve to notify and make the reader want to know more about the topic so the editors must make these cover lines short and snappy in order to keep the reader interested and read more of the magazine but interesting in order to keep the reader wanting to read more of the magazine. An example from this cover is ‘Make money on Campus’ it is put in big and bold yellow words as editors are confident many students would be interested in how to do this.