DRAFT ANALYSISBy Evan Williams

Front CoverI am doing the Christmas edition of ‘Scenes’ which will appeal to a young audience as Christmas is a popular and exciting time for children and younger teenagers. I decided to use a large title as this is an important feature of the magazine. The title should be quite bold and striking to show that this is the next big pop magazine. The layout is also quite cluttered in appearance which is common to see and there are plenty of cover lines to show the gossipy style of the magazine. I’ve included snow flakes on the front cover to show the wintery style of this version of ‘Scenes’. The colours I am using are reds, greens, and some greys and blues to create an festive yet wintery atmosphere.

The posters in the bottom right corner will help to brighten up the page and make sure there is a lot happening on the page. A young audience prefers lots of pictures so this will attract them to the magazine. The language used on the front cover is very informal particularly on the cover lines which emphasises the Mainstreamer psychographic intended for this magazine. I have used Mainstream artists on the cover lines for example, One Direction, who are a world famous boy band therefore the typical Mainstreamer audience will be drawn to a magazine with ‘One Direction wrote on the cover. Ultimately, this will attract a mass audience that will want to buy our magazine.

Contents PageThe layout of my contents page for the Christmas edition should look something similar to this. I decided to put the text on the left side of the page as this is a usual feature in a current pop magazine. The inclusion of the ‘Exclusive’ section is also a typical feature therefore it makes our my magazine look more professional. The colours we use are going to be similar to those used on the front cover to show we are persisting with the Christmas theme throughout.

We also want to include some images on the contents page but we are not sure how many as we want a variety of artists on the page, but as it is a contents page, it shouldn’t look too cluttered. Another reason for a selection of images is that this would appeal to our young but ‘Mainstreamer’ audience because they prefer a mixture of pictures and text on the page. It is vital that we make a magazine that will appeal to our target audience so pictures on the contents page are a ‘must’ from my point of view, and the other people in my team also.

Double Page Spread

For my double page spread I am using quite a simple but effective layout as I am putting a main image of ‘Daniel Archibold’ on the left page with a full quote and then the interview/text on the right page. This reason for this is that we can produce just one quality image and not two or three that aren’t as good. A large image taking up a most of page has a bigger impact on the audience in making them read the article on the opposite page.

Although we want our magazine to look original and for it to have it’s own style, we don’t want it to look amateurish. We feel this may come across if we don’t include these sorts of features.We made the decision to put the whole interview together on the right page so that it is simple to read for our audience. If it was split up into sections, is would look disorganised and scruffy.I wanted a pull quote on the double page spread as this is a very common feature on any magazine, so it would be wrong to leave empty space when we could include a pull quote.