That’s Life!Magazine Cover Analysis

The masthead doesn’t have any capital letters in it to imply to the audience that this is a casual magazine for people who just want to read interesting life stories. The masthead is also the largest font size so the audience can immediately identify the name of the magazine. The use of the bold white colour against the bright red background brings attention to the masthead almost immediately so that they know what the magazine is called whilst it is also very clear to read to make it easily identifiable.

The date of the issue along with the cover price is placed just above the masthead so that the audience would see it straight after looking at the masthead. Along with this the price of the magazine is placed right next to the date so that if the customer was interested enough to look at the date they would also see how much the magazine was. It may be in such a small font so that the customer doesn’t concentrate on the price too much so that it doesn’t put them off purchasing the magazine if it was too expensive for them.

This main image of a happy woman gives the magazine a friendly tone, welcoming the audience to read through the magazine. The use of direct address in the image makes the magazine look very inviting to customers amongst others that the customer may buy. Her facial expression also builds on the inviting friendliness of the magazine because she has such a wide smile and raised eyebrows.

This strip attracts the audience as it uses a bright colour scheme with contrasting colours that stand out on the cover, such as the yellow and red. The use of the bright red ‘New!’ attracts customers to the text next to it stating new puzzles and persuades fans of these puzzles to buy the magazine so they can also get the puzzles as well. The headline emphasising on the word murder also brings attention to audiences that would be interested by murder stories, again persuading people to buy the magazine.

The main cover line is placed just under the main image in the largest bold text to ensure that it will most likely be the first headline the audience sees. The colour scheme used for the main cover line is also very effective as the black font colour against the black text makes it stand more than anything else on the cover because it is the only time that colour scheme is used. The red line colour used on one of the text lines could be symbolising the danger she was in in this story whilst the supporting images show the damage that has been caused, persuading audiences to buy the magazine to read her story.

The bar code for the magazine is also placed in the very corner of the cover so that it doesn’t bring any attention to it so the audience maintains full attention to the headlines on the magazine. Because it is so small and in black and white it doesn’t attract any attention to it because the rest of the magazine’s colour scheme is very bright.

This cover line including the quote ‘I’m your daughter!’ is effective as it connotes this story and the rest of the cover lines being real stories that the audience would want to read about. The words ‘Shock Discovery’ being styled in all capitals and italic makes the cover line stand out because none of the over headlines are stylised in that way.

These two puffs placed at the bottom of the magazine act as cover lines to help get in more stories from the magazine on the cover as an attempt to get more customers to purchase the magazine. These stories are clearly not as detailed as the rest of the stories on the cover as they do not attract as much attention to them but they are still important stories.