Bodmin College magazine front cover

Bodmin College Magazine Analysis

Target Audience

The primary target audience for the Bodmin College Magazine is students aged 11-19, both male and female. The secondary target audience is teachers, parents, governors etc.

Masthead

The masthead does not do its job properly for many reasons. One reason is that it is too small, so it doesn’t catch the audience’s attention. The masthead is boring, as it uses dull colours and a plain and uninteresting font. This will not help to attract the target audience to read it, as 11-19 year olds want something that looks exciting and eye-catching.

Layout

The layout is poor as there are too many things going on with no main focal point. Having one main picture with some text and maybe some smaller pictures around it would work much more effectively as the audience would know where to look instead of looking everywhere.

Colour

The colour of the text is not very easily readable on the background used. For example, the white text on the gold background in the centre of the page is barely readable at all. The colours used are boring and dull and will not attract the target audience to read the magazine.

Imagery

The quality of the images are very poor. They are all long shots and are quite blurred, especially the top left picture. The purple smoke in the image leads to a very bad photo, as the kids in it look ill. They should have more images to do with other things, such as sport or photography, as this would attract a larger audience.

Text

There is hardly any text on the page. The text that is there is barely readable. The main text on the page says ‘Bodmin College’s 13^th Community Dance Platform’, which alienates people who are interested in things other than dance as it seems as though it is all the magazine is about.

Conclusion

I believe that this cover is really not very effective at attracting its target audience, as the colours are dull, the masthead is boring, there is little text and what text is there is hard to read. There are lots of poorly taken images with no real focus point. Overall it is not a very good magazine as it does not do what a magazine needs to do to attract its target audience.