Magazine Cover Review

     My initial impression of the magazine covers and featured articles was noticing just how much simple things like color and spacing make a big difference in how engaged you are with the article. I also noticed how they like to keep the same theme throughout. For example, in the Men’s Health magazine they kept the same theme of race throughout the cover page and the featured article. The cover page mentioned race as well as the featured article, where there is a big bold title that involves race. They also have a celebrity, Yahya Abdul, who mentions race in the featured article.  

    I also noticed that the second pace of almost all magazines was an ad page. An example of this is in the Southern Living article they advertising tourism in the south, which is the audience their magazine is geared towards, so the ad will appeal to those people. Another example of ads going along with the target audience of the magazine is in the Traveler magazine, which is geared towards people who have the money to travel. Their advertisements include expensive brands like Yves Saint Laurent and Louis Vuitton. 

*On the cover of this Southern Living magazine, they have a section called "The Charm of Charleston", which will likely highlight the best parts of Charleston to persuade readers to visit. 

A strange trend I noticed in the magazines were that the magazines geared towards women featured shorter, broken-up articles and the magazine geared towards men featured longer, chunky articles. Prior to looking at the magazines, I would have assumed it to be the opposite. For example, in the Rolling Stone magazine, which is geared toward men, the featured article is very long and one big chunk, where in the Cosmopolitan magazine, which is geared toward women, the featured article is only 2 and a half pages long and is broken up by pictures of Joey King, who the article is about. In the article written by Michael Scherer, he says, “Over at Rolling Stone, once a paragon of long-form innovation, editor Ed Needham admits that he doesn't even bother to read long articles in magazines. "People just don't have as much time to read" he told USA Today.” This means that the future of magazines is going to be shorter articles that are easier to read, because the amount of time people have is becoming less and less, and attention spans are getting smaller and smaller. Another quote from the article that proves this is, “No one can deny the visual sea change that has overtaken the magazine industry in the last three decades. Most magazines now resemble movie posters more closely than they do the dry pages of a book. They are filled with color, oversized headlines, graphics, photos, and pull quotes.” This quote shows that magazines are already undergoing the changes to make the articles smaller and easier to read by adding in visuals and quotes to break up the article.  

As far as my portfolio, I am leaning toward the magazine still because I see how I can incorporate visuals into it and break up the articles to be less of big chunks and more smaller pieces separated by things like quotes and photos. I understand the different elements that go into making the magazine and I believe I will be able to incorporate them all to create a good featured article and magazine cover for my portfolio project.