Textual analysis of the front cover

Front cover is a very important part of the magazine as it attracts readers' attention. It also tells what this magazine is about before opening the content page.

Here are some examples of different front covers :

This is the front page of a college magazine "Common Sense". It's very bright and colourful, therefore it would attract attention of the target audience who are teenagers(students). The image on the front cover is a mid close up of a new rising star. The photograph is edited in the photo shop and it makes the front cover look very creative. All the cover lines are printed in different colours and that makes the front cover look even more colourful, however I'm afraid it makes it hard to read, therefore it might not grab attention. Talking about the cover lines I can say that they are all catching and interesting and they would arise curiosity of teenagers as it covers top topic teenagers must be interested in. In the left top corner it says that this magazine is free and its written in bright yellow colours to attract attention, because most of the teenagers would prefer free magazines.






This is the front cover of St. Edmund's college magazine "College life". The title, I believe, gives away what the magazine is about. It looks very formal as we can see the college crest on the left top corner of the page. The photograph on the front cover presents students singing in the chapel and that gives us an idea that maybe the main article will be talking about the event those students took part in. On the left bottom side of the page there's a list of what is inside this issue. Its very brief, however mentions all the important articles students might want to see. The colours of this front cover are not very bright, however blue and white colours harmonize together.







"Student ID" is a Ludlow College Student Magazine. The front cover of it is very bright and its done in red tones. There's an autumn leaf used as a background and what's more interesting is that there's no big photograph on the front cover, however there are few little ones on the side. At the right top corner there's a yellow star with a price in it and it says that it costs 90p. There's a thin black banner at the bottom of the page which gives away the titles of a few articles that are presented in the magazine. At the right side near the pictures there's a yellow cover line which says that there are more pictures inside. I believe this front cover is a bit boring and could be more informative, however it still attracts the audience and gives the idea of what this particular issue is about.


Looking at those three front covers of different magazines helped me a lot because it gave me the idea of how effective I could present my front cover. It also showed me some disadvantages which I will try to avoid, things like bad quality of the pictures of creating a too bright design. Personally I like the College Life front cover the most as its not very bright and it contains a lot of information, even though its brief, I think it attracts not only its target audience but also people who might randomly be looking at this magazine.