Magazine Cover Review

 

Magazine Cover Review 

Usually, when I see a magazine, it is common for me to overlook it and the details. When discussing the magazines in class, I learned of the importance of visuals, such as on a magazine, and how it impacts the viewer and their overall impression. When I took a closer look into the magazines, I could form some first impressions of the magazines I have not seen or focused on before. To start, the cosmopolitan magazine, starring Joey King on the cover, gave me the first impression that women are seen as very influential and powerful in the eyes of the Cosmopolitan magazines. Not only women and their confidence, but their bodies and the way they dress speak for themselves. With the Cosmopolitan magazines, the women dress fancily but not as fancy as with the Vogue magazines. Also, based on the cover with Joey King, the texts had pink, white, and black colors. I could tell from the text and what it described that it favored humor in what has been going on recently, such as with “Wear a damn mask!” in relation to COVID-19 and “Will you ever put on heels again?” which notions to quarantining at home.  

“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 quote stresses the importance today with how magazines strive to catch the attention of readers by experimenting with types of text, text colors, outfits of models on the cover, as well as the celebrities that appear too. Also, another quote states, “The magazine-reading future, in other words, will be bite-sized. The narrative will surrender to the newsflash. Image will subsume the written word.” This quote is also significant because we know that magazines always want to appeal to the reader so they can profit from it. Since people like Ed Needham do not have the attention span to read long articles anymore, magazines today and in the future will abide to their desires and make magazines shorter in favor of them. 

Another magazine that is worthy of talking about is Vogue. I have heard a lot about vogue recently based on social media such as Instagram and Tik Tok. What every Vogue magazine strives to have in common is that there are rich brands visible and models fit to advertise them. Vogue’s goal is to premiere sophisticated and popular (yet wealthy) brands with appealing celebrities and models. While Vogue and Cosmopolitan’s audience is focused on women, there are many magazines that are focused on men. GQ is one of them. I realized that GQ uses more bold oriented colors, although black, white and grey are neutral, there is bold yellow—which in this case, relates to the celebrity on the cover, “Channing Tatum.” With the bold yellow colors, it can be inferred that this celebrity is seen as a bold and daring person. 

Another male oriented magazine is Men’s Health. What I realized is that all these magazines have a red title and red subtitles, including different shades of red. The shades of red represent the boldness of men in the covers, as well as how they pose. Also, the way the men dress is casual. That infers that what the magazine will premiere is more general and for people of middle or lower class. Lastly, there are specialty magazines. It can be inferred that the people on the Rolling Stone magazines are known as daring and notorious. With the Rolling Stone magazine including Travis Scott on the cover, he poses in a notorious and mysterious way. Also, red is known as a notorious cover too, which is the color of the text ‘Rolling Stone.’ 

In conclusion, from all these magazines, I learned that when it is not overlooked, magazines are like a gateway to understanding the importance of visuals, angles, and colors—and how they can shape the mood and theme of a presentation of an idea.