College magazine textual analysis

The colour scheme makes the magazine’s target audience fairly obvious, females, the subject of the cover shoot and her pose/attire reinforce the notion that this text is aimed at adolescent girls in college. Heavily stylized text is inter textual to fonts used in cover lines for fashion magazines such as Vogue or Elle, this gives off the idea that fashion and money are the main interests of the reader.

The overdone use of heavy airbrushing connotes glamour and perfection and shows the magazine as being a highly polished publish, yet its poor implementation gives the cover an overall unprofessional and somewhat cheap agenda. The subjects pose is highly unconventional of a magazine aiming to represent itself as being a part of the fashion genre. Her makeup and hair are not even close to being up to standard, her clothing looks cheap and the shot does not flatter her figure of make her look thin enough to be in conformation with modern day fashion/modelling conventions. Seeing that this is a college magazine we can assume that the girl featured on the cover is nothing more than a student volunteering for the job, which also means that she is highly unlikely to be seen inside the actual magazine. You would think that if she is just to be a figurehead they would have been more attentive to the composition of their cover, and made it look more conventional which in turn would add to the appeal to its target audience.

The use of typography in this cover is perhaps the most interesting feature through their use of symbols to replace various letters in their text, I think this is done to further the magazines relation to its target audience. The way it almost mimics modern day ‘text-speak’ further strengthens its connection to its adolescent target audience. The use of partially italicized cover lines is also interesting in its implied statements about the subject matter. For example where it says “SEX, DRUGS & SAFETY” the first two words are in italics, whereas the word safety is emboldened. This is a sign that the things in Italics are more important than the safety.