Analysis of Magazine Front Cover

How do magazine front covers use denotation and connotation to attract their intended audience?

The magazine front cover that I’m analysing is The Official Xbox 360 Magazine. The intended audience are people who like to play Xbox games and most likely male, although females do read the magazine. The colour of the magazine front cover is dark grey/black which connotes to us that the intended audience of the magazine is male because the colours are seen as bold, dominant and powerful.

 The mast head font is large, bold and white, which stands out against the dark background. The style of font is quite basic, it shows that the intended audience that buy this magazine aren’t drawn in by the title, but instead the large image that covers the majority of the front cover of the magazine. The sell line below the mast head is also quite minimalistic, which just states that this certain magazine is official, bringing in a wider audience because the sources of are seen as more trustworthy than other gaming magazines. The font that is more or less centred is large and has a slight medieval style, which represents the game that the headline is about “The Elder Scrolls V Skyrim”. The rest of the font on the page is just like the masthead font, very basic. They have made it so that the “world exclusive” story catches our eye the most as it is different to the rest of the font.

The layout has been centred around the image, which makes the image the main feature of the front cover, making other items on the page less important. Features on the front cover and been put where they can fit, making it a messy style of layout. The messy layout appeals to a younger audience of male teenagers because they’re stereotyped as unorganised and careless, e.g. having a messy room and not caring about personal hygiene. At the very top of the page, there is a banner which says that there’s a free disc that comes with the magazine if you buy it. “7 PLAYABLE GAME DEMOS” would drag a gamer’s attention towards the magazine because a gamer would want to play demos of a game to test it out before they considered buying it for a much more expensive price. The colour of the banner is in bright green to ensure that it’s one of the first things that someone will spot when looking at the magazine.

The image is quite brutal, angry and in your face. The man looks extremely angry and vicious, which goes side by side with his muscly physique and armour that he’s wearing, this appearance is very masculine. The pose that the character is in looks like he’s about to murder someone, making him look quite intimidating. It appeals to a male audience as games make you feel like you’re in a different world, if they use a bold and extremely powerful and macho image, it makes men feel as if they could be like this, or feel as if they are that character when they’re playing the game.

The typical type of intended audience for the Official Xbox Magazine could be a group of people that still live with their parents, with an age range of 15-19. There is actually an age rating for the magazine which is 15, as it shows on the bottom of the magazine.  Hobbies would most likely include gaming because if they’re buying a magazine that’s about 6 pound, it must be very interesting for them to read about game reviews, and for the magazine to suggest games that might appeal to the audience. They most likely wouldn’t have a job, because they’d be too busy at their job to have time to play games on an Xbox. They would most likely be in college or no education at all, depending on how interested in gaming they are, would be how much they would play it.