Magazines and Audiences

Fashion Magazines 

These are examples of magazines which fall in the fashion genre. Its clear target audience is women, due to the conventions that have purposely been pursued in the covers of these well known magazines. The main consumers of these magazines would be those who are mainly younger, ranging from around 16-25 year olds who have an interest and liking to fashion and the latest trends. All fashion genre magazines illustrate a similar image and iconic code and convention. They are similar because the audience and genre have to be recognised instantly when placed on the shelves in shops, this is to draw attention to the cover so that when looking for a specific magazine it is easily identifiable and allows magazines to become iconic.

From these covers the genre is obvious due to the main images and the cover lines which include the words associated to fashion, such as 'style', 'trend' and even using the word fashion so conveniently to entice the reader. These words are used to make it clear to the audiences that they are going to feature things of this association and therefore make it so clear to the buyers that it is a fashion magazine. 

From gathering these magazines it is noticeable that they all include an iconic masthead in which are recognised globally, they are presented largely on the cover and they are also all of similar font styles using serif font which interprets the audience it is aimed at, due to the font being more suited to a women's magazine. Serifs are classically used and therefore are widely known and understood. They have grown to be well recognised mastheads because of the popularity of these magazines. The titles must be boldly presented on the cover so that audiences are able to be drawn to the cover due to the name of the magazine that they intend to buy. However the covers also have a range of san serif font styles to attract the audience. Having a variety of font styles makes the cover look more interesting and eye catching. 

I can see a clear use of a main image being a fashion model which entices people to buy the magazine because of the representation it conveys, it suggests women should be into fashion and take an interest of their image to look good. The colours used differentiates on each cover, but the scheme used are those that would attract girls because they are bold and bright. They use a thematic link between the colour scheme and the month that they will be sold, for example the dark colours used would indicate months like November, December, in contrast pastel light colours would be featured on a summer edition of the magazine. From the magazines i collected they all correspond a variety of colours, this displays the use of thematic links. It is evident that they all have a particular colour scheme to it, and use the same colours through the colour, even matching the cover line, masthead and the clothing worn by the model, this makes the covers look slick and presentable. 

They are all similar due to the representation of young girls being used to sell the magazine and the indication of fashion and beauty. Girls would be drawn into buying these magazines because of the well known models, and the identification that they will include fashion items for inspiration. The use of celebrities will entice any girl to buy the magazine just because of the feature of that one particular figure, it is a way of gaining more sales and making girl inspired. They are all showing perfect skin, hair, make up, fashion and figure which portrays a sense of femininity and also make the cover dominate from other types of magazine.