Bodmin College Magazine

Target Audience

The primary target audience of the Bodmin College Magazine is the students, aged between 11 and 19, of both genders. The secondary target audience of the Bodmin College Magazine is the parents and carers of the students.

Masthead 

The masthead does not fit the purpose because of a number of reasons. One reason is that the masthead is too small, because usually a masthead takes up one eighth of the page. Another reason is that the colours do not stand out against the background, which is also irrelevant to the subject of the newspaper. In short, this masthead does not fulfill the purpose of appealing to the target audience of the students. The masthead connotes that this school is old and a throwback to the 80’s, not fitting with the school at all.

Layout 

The layout of the front cover does not follow common workings of magazines, because it features three images on the front, none of which are particularly eye-catching or fitting with the masthead, as a magazine front cover should. There is no singular main image that draws the eye. Normally, there is one main image with some text and occasionally another small inset picture. It does not appeal to many of the target audience, appealing more to female dance students than the rest of the students.

Colour

The colours of the text are not readable compared to the images in the background, because the text has over-lapped the images and they do not follow the common convention that only about 5 colours are used on the cover of the magazine, instead using almost every colour available.

Imagery

The three images shown in the front cover are all taken as long shots that have blurred because they have been zoomed in and cropped too far, so the pictures are out of focus. Also, the smoke effect in the bottom-right corner does not look very good, looking more like the printer ran out of ink.

Typography/Text

There is not much text on the front cover. In terms of denotation, there are no story hooks or teasers, and no issue number. The text for the main story is hardly readable, and reads “Bodmin College’s 13^th Community Dance Platform.” This immediately loses the interest of anyone who was not involved in Dance, which is a large number of the target audience.

Conclusion

Overall, this cover is not very good, following none of the common trends of a magazine, with no strapline, teasers or issue number.