This is my front cover of my student magazine. I named my magazine ‘Media Monthly’ as it is a memorable name due to its use of alliteration and it fits the purpose, genre and audience of the magazine well. Also the magazine is a monthly issue which is why i used the term ‘monthly’. The font heading is in a fixed location, it’s capitalized and bold to make it stand out as much as possible because the brand name of my magazine uses a lot of characters therefore the heading had to be a bit smaller than i originally wanted it to be so that it could fit horizontally across the page. However by adding effects onto the heading such as ‘outglow shadow’ the font appears sharper and stands out better against the background. I choose the purple font as it contrasts against the background colours which enables it to stand out, because i have a brown and white background i needed a colour which could be visible over both fonts and in my opinion this particular colour worked best. I stuck to a 3 colour scheme ‘a light shade of purple, a dark shade of purple and white’ choosing the right colours is essential for making a magazine cover look like a magazine or making it look more like a poster. The majority of magazines use a 3 colour scheme as it makes it look more professional and not to over powering with colour, I have tried to interpret this into my own work to make it look more like a realistic magazine cover. Throughout the cover i have used various types of font and font sizes to interpret current magazines such as vogue and cosmopolitan. I arranged my texts in different positions to add versatility and unique. The image i used was a photo i took of my friend Gabbie. I took a close up shot slightly at an angle which bleeds of the page, this works well as a whole composition between the image and text. Even though the image is at a slight angle, Gabbies eyes are looking straight into the camera which is good because it makes the audience think that she’s looking straight at you which grabs the reader’s attention which is an important feature to use on a magazines front cover. A column inch, callout and caption is all present in my work. Lastly i added in a bar code to create a realistic look to the magazine front cover

This is my finished ‘time’ magazine front cover. As you can see from my previous post i made some changes and added a few column inches to the cover. I made sure that the magazine’s heading ‘time’ and lucy’s eyes were above the fold to make it look like a realistic magazine cover.The heading is in a fixed location and the serif font is bold, capitalized and red matching the covers boarder which makes it look effective and more professional. The image bleeds off the page which works well within the whole composition of the magazines cover. The eye level shot of Lucy is an effective shot to use because it gives the effect that she is looking directly into the readers eyes which instantly makes the reader feel involved and that’s important for a magazine as it captures the readers attention which will make them feel intrigued and want to look inside it.  I added in a caption “Towie star Lucy Mecklenbourgh” and quoted “i hired a personal trainer after my split with mario” because that actually happened. This caption will appeal to her fans as know exactly what the caption implies. I also added in a column inch ‘tumble’ and quoted “im so glad billy was my partner” because this lets the audience know that the story inside the magazine will feature Lucy’s ‘tumble’ experience and again it appeals to her fans. I also added in the ‘results with Lucy’ logo as Lucy’s recent publication in the media has been to do with her fitness regime, which lots of people have been interested in therefore by adding her logo to the bottom of the magazine cover it will appeal to various amounts of people. Lastly i stuck to a 3 colour scheme as it looks more professional and doesn’t make the whole composition to overpowering with colour. The boarder and title had to be in red as we had to imitate a copy of a ‘time’ magazine front cover. I then choose to use pastel pink and white for the column inch and captions as the pastel pink compliments Lucy’s lip colour and her nail varnish, the white font breaks the image up and doesn’t make the magazine look to pink and red. I also choose white font as it is a natural colour and contrasts against Lucy’s hair.

Uses and Gratifications Theory

The uses and gratifications theory is a popular approach to understanding mass communication and how people actively seek out specific media to satisfy their needs. The theory focuses more on the consumer/audience, instead of the actual message itself by asking “what people do with media” rather than “what media does to people” (Katz 1959). It assumes that the audience member are not passive but take an active role in interpreting media into there own lives. The theory also holds the audience responsible for choosing media to meet their specific needs. The approach suggests that people use the media to fulfill specific gratifications. This theory would then imply that the media compete against other information sources for viewers gratifications.

The uses and gratifications theory follows a basic model of an audience-centered approach. When the audience seeks out media, they are typically looking for the specific type of media to meet their needs to achieve gratification. The theory is at good value in today’s society because it gives communication scholars a perspective through a number of ideas and theories about media choice and consumption.