Generic Conventions of a Student Magazine

Covers:

Names: Bold, big blocks of colour, capital letters, generally sans serif fonts, very clear to read, slightly overlapped by the central image, single words or short phrase, normally uses the word 'student', always at the top of the page. Eye-catching to draw readers into their magazine.

Online connections: Links to websites, 'Like us on Facebook', 'Follow us on Twitter', QR codes. Trying to move audiences online.

Central Image: Normally the only image on the page, covers the entire page, is the main focus of the cover, medium close ups of people.  It highlights the main article/theme of the magazine. 

No Secondary Image: Very blank cover, makes the cover look very plain and boring, very little interest. Does not entice the reader, doesn't look like an entertaining magazine.

Layout: Very square, everything is in line and all have share edges. It gives a very serious and sophisticated feel. Isn't very exciting for the target audience of students, it is very boring.

Splash/Headline: There is one main splash/headline. It drives the focus straight to the main story/theme of the magazine which supplements the central image.

House Style: A lot of magazines don't have a house style. They were quite mixed in fonts and colours. However some did have a very clear house style.

Cover-lines: Every magazine had a few cover-lines, on average between 3 and 5. They also normally sat in the lower section of the magazine, either a strip at the bottom or in a list form either side of the page (commonly on the right). 

Articles Trailed: Most magazines included trailed articles, they were typically 1 line long and gave very brief summaries by using just single or a couple of words.

Contents:  A lot of magazines seemed to have contents to do with modern media.  On the covers a lot advertised the content included reviews of latest movies, TV, music and games. Some also included interviews.

Puffs:  A lot of the magazines included a puff for competitions to win. many prizes were things such as iPads. 


Contents Page

Images: All pages I viewed included images to illustrate some of the main articles from the magazine. On average there was 3 images usually to the left on the page. They draw the attention of the reader to these articles more that the others.

Highlighted Articles:  Some articles were highlighted as being the main or special articles. These were usually highlighted with either a picture or a brief summary of that page.  They were also at the top of the page, the first place the reader would read.

Colour:  Some magazines colour coded their contents with a key to the side. They used different colours to represent different aspects of the magazines. For example blue = reviews.

Welcomes: Most magazines had a brief paragraph welcoming the reader to the magazine. It contained a welcome, brief summary of that time in the college and some a thank you for reading.  The welcome was typically written by the head of the college.

Online: A lot of contents pages gave links to social media pages and/or websites, the magazines that did this did not have their link on the front cover.

House Style: The contents page always followed the style of the front cover.  It used the same fonts, colours and parts of the layout used on the front cover.

Layout: The layouts were very neat and uniform. Everything was inline with each other. They had very clear layouts to read straight through.