Textual Analysis

Media Magazine Issue 33: September 2010

The Creativity Issue (Cover)

• Masthead – Large font for the two M’s in Media Magazine. Colour palette used is simple, white and green. Stands out against the darkened background. Obviously gives us the subject of the magazine straight away.
• Strapline – Again the colour palette is black with white font layered on top, very basic. The issue name stands out as ‘The Creativity Issue’ has been bolded to stand out more.
• Photos – Photo Montage of films. The colour palette is dark and almost scary looking. The photos are eye-catching; the readers may recognise some of the films shown on the front of the magazine.
• Colour Palette – The colour palette presented on the cover of the magazine is very basic, the only complex colours which are featured are from the photos taken from the films. Other than this, the font is shown in block colours (whites and greens), striking colours which would stand out against the darkened background. The Media Magazine often features a different colour palette with each issue.
• Cover lines – Bolded, white font and are a little small, but the layout of them is in the bottom left hand corner, so we can still see the photo montages of the films (main focus of the cover, readers are most likely to look to the photos or visual aspects of the front cover rather than the text). Bullet-pointed simple, quick for the readers (teenagers) to scan over.

Media Magazine Issue 33: September 2010:

The Creativity Issue (Contents)

• Background – The background is very simply, it is a plain white but instead of this being a negative point it enables the main focus (the contents and images) to stand out more against the background, the readers will notice them more. By using white as the background, the images and colour of the text seems more fresh, if they had used a darker colour such as black it would have made the text seem dull and weak.
• Font – The font is very basic, it is sans-serif, nothing too fancy or over complicated which makes it easier for us as the reader to scan through. Some of the text has been highlighted with green and made bold to stand out against the rest of the text, these are the headings of the articles, and it allows us as the readers to find the article we wish to read much quicker, very efficient. The size of the font is however a little small, but this has been done so that images can be included in the contents page, so the more images they use the less room they have for the texts.
• Headline - The headline is very similar to the whole design of the contents page, simple. the colour which has been used it a plain black which allowes the Headline to stand out against the white background of the page.The text all seems to be in lower case, to me I see this as unformal but then again the magazine is directed at teenager and they wouldn't care much for grammer or the correct
  

  punctuation. The font type is very basic, it is sans-serif just like the rest of the font presented on the contents page.
• Images/Photos – The photos which have been featured on the contents page are taken from movies, either a still of a particular scene or a promotional image of a movie (poster). The sizes of the images are not particularly big, but they have included 6 images and so they current size they are presented in is around the size they should be, if they made them larger then they would have to use two pages for the contents page as the text wouldn’t fit. The photos which are featured go with the articles so just by looking at them we can see what the articles will be about.
• Numbers – They have placed the page numbers next to the articles, the sizes of the numbers are much larger than the simple text, and this helps us as the readers to find the page quickly. However, the colour of the number is a light grey, which means that they can fade very easily into the white background.
• Layout – The layout of the contents page is again simple. The small summaries of the articles are put into 3 columns, even the images are in line with everything else, all neat and easily to locate around. I find that with this magazine, it may be directed at teenagers but the layout of the contents page is very mature and organised. For me the page isn't that interesting to look at but then again the main point of the magazine is the articles, the contents is just to be used to navigate the magazine.