Magazine Annotations

Heat Magazine

Heat is a magazine about celebrity's and it's target audience are generally women aged 20 - 30; this is because the celebrity's highlighted in the magazine are in that age range. Heat magazine's tag line is 'This weeks hottest celebrity news', this is above the bold, red Masthead saying 'Heat'. They target their audience in various ways by using connotations of a magazine. As you can see their central image is a cover model who is well known. In addition to this the central image portrays her as upset and lost as her expression makes the reader think this. There is a bold cover-line next to the picture which allows us as the reader to understand that the main article is about Nikki's love life. The puff is in yellow which stands out against all the other colours of the magazine showing another article that has been written in the magazine. Furthermore, the theme of colours - yellow, blue and red - are used within all editions of the heat magazine which help the magazine to be easily recognisable in the sea of magazines that are on the shelves. Finally, the barcode and price have been clearly stated on the left side of the magazine; they do not ruin or distort the image.

Cosmopolitan Magazine

The cosmopolitan Magazine clearly shows that it is targeted towards women as all the main font is written in pink. This is because pink is usually associated with women so the target audience will be more likely to pick up the magazine. They have a puff that is yellow, which is different to the rest of the cover, and promotes a freebie of vouchers to persuade the target audience to buy the magazine. The central image is of a happy, young cover model that is the main story of the magazine. We can tell how the central image relates to the magazine because the cover-line next to it gives us information about what the article is about. The tagline is 'The world's No.1 women's magazine.' This depicts that the magazine is targeted to women. The article uses a direct mode of address to make the reader feel as though they are relating to them as a person, they do this by using the word 'YOU' in capital, bold writing that is a different colour from the rest.

Conclusion

In conclusion, after looking at other magazines I think it will be massively important for me to ensure that I have targeted my magazine to the target audience as this will be the main people that pick it up and if they don't like it, then the magazine will not do well! Firstly, I think the top feature that the readers will look at is the colour scheme, I mean, if the magazine is targeted towards teenage boys it would be a very bad idea to start making all the headline bright pink as they just won't pick up the magazine!