First Magazine

The masthead is distinctive and stands out because the red stands out against the white back ground, it is important to make the masthead stand out because usually when a magazine is in rack in a store, the title is the first thing a person sees, so this will set themselves away from the rest of the magazines, the colours complement each other well.

The background is of three children that go to this school. This is showing that the school cares about their students and that they are the most important part of the school for them by putting them on the front page, instead of for example the teachers or the school etc. The reasons why they have chosen the background of a sporting activity, is because they might be going for the image of their school being more than just education and academic work, they want to show that they do care about other things such as sport, by the facial expressions of the child it suggest joy so it connotes that the children do enjoy school and doing activities, this could and or will have a good impression on the reader of the school.

The secondary image are being anchored by the condensed contents page on the front cover, this allows the reader to have an insight before opening the actual magazine. Unconventional layout for a front cover, but it is still effective because readers will be able to see what the content and features are, for example one feature could get them interested and then they will buy the magazine if they hadn’t of put this contents page on then they might not of sold the magazine, so a condensed contents page might be what I will put on my front cover, I will have to do research on bigger and popular magazine to see if they use this tool.

 The low angle shot makes the pupils look important, this symbolises again that the students do contain power and also one could believe that this symbolises that the students of this school have the power to have a voice and they have more freedom.

Second Magazine

The masthead of this magazine is even the most different of them all, they haven’t gone for the typical big bolded title along the very top of the magazine, they have decreased the size and it is further down the magazine then a normal magazine would have it. There is no real difference in the size of the masthead and the tagline which is odd, the readers and audience will be not used to this, this is very different to a magazine layout such as Heat, Closer, and Hello etc. again the red and white colours they have used complement each other well and there is an obvious contrast between the two. The font they have is serif; this is predominantly used within newspapers such as The Times, the Independent, The Telegraph etc. they all share a similar audience which is primarily upper class, wealthy people, this would be the type of audience in which this magazine would try to be aiming at.

One could say that the layout of the magazine is rather messy and doesn’t have a particular order to it there is nothing that really makes it a magazine there is nothing in particular that show elements or conventions of a magazine, it is almost like a leaflet or poster. There are no side bars, pugs/puffs, contents, sub headings; these are the key components that the magazine is missing from the front cover.  

  The secondary images although are of children and them playing there is not text that anchors the images and explains what is going on, this could be another feature they could add.

There are no images of the school itself only images of activates, this could have a negative effect on the audience and readers because this could say to them that they aren’t even bothered enough to put the school onto their front cover of their magazine, they only care about out of school activates, which could worry the parents of children that might send their children to this school.

Third Magazine

The style of the masthead is different to the first magazine, it is hard to differentiate from the masthead and the other titles and tagline, because the makers of the magazine have squeezed them together and have got different font sizes and colours, one could say that it would be hard for the audience to read the magazine and could be able to clearly say which is which. Although the pink against the white background is powerful because it stands out and be distinctive for the audience to read. Also it is telling the audience straight away who the audience is for the magazine by saying ‘parent’.

The background is of a girl obviously a student who goes to the school because she is in her uniform, this is symbolising some type of order and structure the school has, which then shows to the demographic (Parent) that they should send their child to this school. The girl has been focused on, one could assume she has been focused on is because she is a hardworking and successful student that goes to this school, we can denote this because on her collar she seems to have several badges that suggests she gets award for academic work. The same as the first magazine the facial expression is that she is smiling and happy symbolising this is a good school and she enjoys being there.

There are no secondary images, this could hinder the magazine makers because if they don’t anchor the text in the sidebar then they might lose another type of audience the students, yes they aren’t aiming at the students, but they could try to because then it will get the students and parents looking at it together and talk about the features in the magazine which could help each other connect and talk about school. They have not put in a mini contents section; this could also hinder them as the audience would like to know what they will be reading, before they buy. On the other hand they do put in a tiny side bar of one feature but again it isn’t enough.

A good feature of this magazine is that they have put in a pug in the bottom left hand corner; this is good because it then has the appearance of a typical magazine rather than just an obviously amateur magazine.