Magazine Cover Review

 Magazine covers are the cornerstone of attracting potential readers. Authors and illustrators must incorporate flashy and catchy titles to catch attention and sell their magazine. Many magazines have their own, unique ways of designing their magazine to appeal towards the audience they want to attract. Magazines like Forbes, Sports illustrated, GQ, Motor Trend, and Men’s Journal all have easily distinguishable covers that best represent the essence of a magazine cover.

            Initially, Forbes is a business styled magazine that focuses on simple details. Their logo is the basic, all-white word Forbes, centered at the top of their magazine. It usually focuses on wealthy businessmen and entrepreneurs. They want to attract the attention of all business-oriented people, who seek interest on how to make money or are simply interested in money itself. The Colombia Journalism Review states, “In addition to grabbing attention, the explosion of choices parallels a fragmentation of consumer tastes.” Forbes puts questions on their magazine cover that peak interest in the consumer, giving them the reason they need to keep reading. They want the consumer to want to read what they are putting out.

            Next up would be Sports Illustrated, with their sports centered content. They try to attract ages ranged from teenagers to young adults who seek knowledge within the sports realm. Each cover highlights one athlete, while the content goes over much more. Bold text and bright colors are used on this to appeal to a younger audience. Sometimes, they have a swimsuit edition, which features attractive women in bikinis. The only reasoning behind this is too attract men and obtain revenue by men wanting to see that kind of content.

            Another example is GQ, which is higher on the class-ranking scale. What I mean by this is that GQ only features rich or famous people, actors, and singers. The target range is very wide because they use popular figures to attract audiences. Their Yellow and Grey ‘GQ’ title is very large and distinguishable. From the Colombia Journalism review, “stories should still go long, but they need to be packaged with numerous ‘access points’--the industry jargon for short sidebars, photographs, and graphics. GQ is a prime example because it has many of these ‘access points,’ that readers jump to throughout the magazine.

            A break from people would give us the realization that interest appears in car magazines as well. Motor Trend is a car magazine that features cars and only cars. It uses basic font text and basic color text to not attract attention away from the cars themselves. They use sleek, modern, antique, and new cars to cover a wide range of vehicles. It covers everything from design, to mechanics. This means that car-junkies will spend their money, thus producing revenue for the magazine.

            The final magazine under review is Men’s Journal. This magazine cover usually depicts an attractive man in some pose. The sides of the image are littered with mini articles for all things man related. That being said, this magazine’s target audience is for men. It’s title is bold but the mini articles are much smaller than the other text. Bright colors such as yellow grab the attention of the potential reader.

            I will probably not be selecting the magazine cover as my project only because the movie title piques my interest a little more. It would still be an option to consider.