Front Cover Magazine Analysis

The banner on the front cover of the Top of the Pops magazine is in a text that stands out on a coloured background. The target audience for this magazine is young teens preferably ages around 13. So the bright colours will catch their attention and want to know what its about. Its all about One Direction so the fact its in big bold fonts and its colourful; it will make them want to buy the magazine and see what its about. They use a puff to substitute the word 'love' with an icon. In this case the love heart. Its semiotics, the connotation of the love heart is that it means love and its a world wide connotation, everybody who sees a love heart used in this way will understand the meaning of the icon, meaning love! The colours used are all bright bold and stand out, the hot pink and sunshine yellow and the bold bright blue, this will draw in the target audience because bright colours attract the younger audience, if they were to use darker colours and less colours it would be targeted at an older audience and the younger audience wont be as appealed to the magazine. At the bottom of the banner is a film strip, the film strip links up up to the words in the banner, the banner is telling the audience that One Direction are making a film so the film strip links up that. 

The masthead of the front cover of the magazine is also in a banner. Its all bright pink, stands out on the page in the top left hand corner, this is also a house style. On every magazine that top of the pops makes, they always put the masthead in the same position. The font is in san- serif, all in capital letters, all white, they put the 'of the' in a white circle and make the font pink instead of white like the rest of the other fonts, this contrasts the colours used. They use images of stars around the inside edge of the banner, this is called iconography. It appeals to the younger audience and also has connotations, the stars could represent the stars they use in the magazine.