Analysis of Student Magazines

This magazine is called 'College Lifestyle'. Since there are no younger years in college, the magazine would be more mature. The magazine is a termly one, so all the stories would be seasonal.

The headline is the same for each magazine, keeping it recognisable and consistent. Although the colour-scheme changes with each issue. The colour-scheme is, however, always kept mature but still attracts young people. There is no overuse of colour, instead it is very subtle.

The coverlines are aimed at college students with topics they can relate to such as technology ("Why We Love Blackberry"). There's also stories relating to current events; this issue was published before a holiday season, so there is an article called "The Ultimate Spring Break Escape" that students will be interested in for their holiday.

The cover photo is of a college student, this will attract other students as they will see he is in their age group and easily recognise that this magazine is aimed for students. It's a very professional and attractive photograph making it more appealing to young people. The magazine seems more welcoming because the cover photo is of someone smiling to show that he's enjoying college.

The majority of the font used is Sans Serif giving it a modern and clean affect that is appealing to young people. There are not many different fonts used and most of the fonts are very similar. This continues to help the magazine seem mature as it is easy to read and there is no exaggeration of different fonts.

This magazine is also a student magazine, but is a lot different than the previous one I analysed. This one includes more information about young culture, music and celebrities, whereas the previous magazine included more information about school, work and college lifestyle.

The mast head is in the middle of the magazine which is quite unusual for a magazine to do. This is probably because there are not many coverlines so they can use more of the space. In the top-right corner of the magazine, it states that it is free in big letters to draw attention to it.

The coverlines that are included just mention names of celebrities with no other information about them, this shows how this particular issue features these celebrities in it, making students want to know what it says.

At the bottom of the magazine it shows advertisements, so obviously the magazine is very popular but if it is free, it will need another source of funding. There is also the link to the magazine written at the bottom, so there is additional information online. All the writing on the cover of this magazine is written in Sans Serif to attract a modern reading audience.

Here is the contents page of "Stu-Mag" magazine:

The contents page is very simple. There is very little colour keeping to the mature modern theme shown with the cover page. There is a filtered image in the corner to continuing showing that the magazine is for sudents as it uses pictures you would normally see on social networking websites such as "instagram".

In the top left corner of the page, there are the page numbers next to the page titles to help the reader find their way around the magazine. On the right hand side of the page are the credits from who contributed into the making of the magazine and underneath that are the contact details. Usually this would be at the back of the magazine or towards the end but because the magazine is so short, there is very little room to drag out the pages.

The font used here is all the same, it is a Sans Serif font and there is no variation. This is to keep the contents page simple and easy to read.