Textual analysis (Basketball Magazine 1)

 

The magazine that I am analysing here is called Dime magazine and it's a basketball magazine. The initial look of it is fairly simplistic, by this I mean that there isn't too many cover lines and stories on the cover at once and this gives it quite a mature feel. This simplistic look suggests that the audience of this magazine would be people the ages of 16-24 years old, furthermore the price of the magazine $4.99 suggests that this magazine is for people this age, the demographic for this magazine as well would most probably be Group E, who go with the age group of the audience that I thought the audience was.

The colours that the magazine uses also indicates who the audience may be. The use of colours such as black, grey, red, white and yellow also help in indicating the audience would be quiet mature. This is as we see other magazines of the same genre that have bright, eye catching colours tend to be aimed at younger audiences than this on, kids who are like 11-14 years old.

The main image of this magazine gives connotations that the basketballer is quiet significant. this is as he has been placed ahead of the masthead and also the coverline that stands out the most is about him and his style of play. 

There aren't many cover lines on the magazine cover and the ones that are there indicate that this magazine is very much concentrated on certain stories and it doesn't try covering as many stories as possible like other types of magazine. Across the first letter in the masthead there is a coverline that indicates that this magazine is special edition and next to the main image we see a logo that indicates the tenth year of the magazine. This suggests that the magazine may get away with pricing the magazine a bit higher than usual. Also we can tell the magazine is a special edition as it features the names of some big basketball players above the masthead. 

In addition the magazine uses a certain structure that means that the audience isn't having to read too much, for instance, the reader will automatically read the masthead and the things around it. After that they will move straight to the middle left as there is the biggest coverline there, then they will read the coverline directly to the right, and then everything directly below that. This is good because it means that readers aren't having to constantly change from left to right when scanning the magazine for cover lines that may lead to them buying the magazine.