Research Codes and Conventions of Student Magazines

Now that I have managed to cover a magazine of my choice, I have now been asked to choose two more magazines to analyse, only this time, as I am going to produce my own front cover for a student/college magazine, these magazines are both going to be focused on student and college life.

Firstly, the title/masthead of this magazine is simply “Student Magazine” which suggests that this magazine may have less creativity and may have been made on a lower budget than other student magazines which I have yet to see.  As for the presentation of the front cover, the main logo seems to have been printed in a simple white formal font, and since I cannot find any images of other issues, I can assume that the logo remains the same with every issue.  Another thing to mention is that the colour scheme is the same as the last magazine I analysed which is a blue background with white text. However, unlike Empire, which was coloured blue to match its theme, this colour scheme hasn’t been filled with anything to suggest that the colour matches the theme. Although the university scarf is coloured blue which suggests that the blue background matches the college colours.

As with all other magazines,this one also contains the date on which it was published and the tagline. According to the front cover, Student Magazine is published monthly as the issue’s date is stated as July 2010 and the tagline is located on the south-west side of the cover and as for the price tag, it’s located on the top right-hand corner and despite the high quality of the front page, the cost is only £1.99 which can be seen as an advantage over other student magazines.

The main image consists of a cropped up image of a smiling student wearing a graduation hat and a small blue scarf over her shoulder with writing, which seems to be written in a foreign language which implies that this girl, who is named Lily according to the main headline, could be a foreign exchange student from a good quality. I do not think that this is the best cover as it is very simple. But it has done a good job of representing an image of student life and appealing to the target audience of students.

The sub-headings on the front cover focus on studying abroad, which supports my earlier theory of the girl on the front cover being an exchange student, a University guide, a sneak preview at the IPhone 4, a countdown of the top 10 best jobs of the future , a lookback at Facebook  and much more.