Grimsby Institute, GX Magazine Analysis

 

Front Cover

The GX magazine has a consistent colour scheme and font. The house style consists of 3 main colours, blue white and grey. This makes the magazine look professional and the vibrant blue also catches eyes. The transparent bottom half also has txt with a matching blue. This is an example of the consistency of the piece. As well as the main image, which has been edited to look like a cartoon, the images in the lower half are consistently framed despite being different sizes. The smaller images are also anchored with headlines of articles in the magazine which are to the left. The front cover is split up into two clear divides, the top which has no text and just the masthead and the bottom half which has the pictures and the anchorage. The main image has been cleverly integrated into the too. Overall the layout is extremely good. It not only gives necessary insight into the magazine and catches eyes it also gives useful information such as the college website which I think has been put in but does not draw attention.

On the front of the magazine the language is very much aimed at teenagers. Phrases such as 'word on the street' and 'what planet are you on anyway?' are used. These are things that would be used more colloquially and not on the front of a magazine aimed at adults. This is very stereotypical and clearly the person who designed this has a very stereotypical view of teenagers as most young people are not like that, they can actually write, talk and punctuate properly. The magazine puts across a very casual image just by looking at the front cover. It is not very 'grown up' and it’s not a very 'square' front cover. However judging by the anchorage the inside will be a bit more forward about its purpose.

Contents

The contents page does not seem to fit in with the house style.  The colour pink has been introduced. This could be because of the main image in the background which features the colour pink or bad design. Also the colour orange makes an appearance in the contents list. The layout of the contents is fairly average with the list on the left and the pictures on the right. The list is also written in a way to get attention from teenagers. It says 'lets talk about sex' to draw the reader’s attention to a much more serious matter about contraception and STI's. It also has a section of 'boring' black text at the bottom. This is just an editor’s message basically telling the reader who made the magazine and about the next issue etc. it is in black as it doesn’t want to draw attention away from the main article. The pictures on the left are also anchored with various article headings but are not clearly linked with them making it confusing to see which article they belong with. Finally what seems to be the slogan of the magazine 'the word on the street' also makes an appearance again, this could be part of the house style.