My Magazine Analysis – Using Semiotic Systems

(Full response and explanation required, with six paragraphs)

Ern Yao

My target audience for this magazine are mostly for people who are interested in travelling
south. The people who would buy these kinds of magazines are most likely people who are
blithe and enjoy travelling or need a vacation. I was aspiring for a target audience that
would most likely be cheerful and rich people. Another thing that would probably be
important to the person buying the magazine would be that they are not petrified of heights
because planes fly at a very high altitude in the sky.

I included five articles on the front cover, one advertisement and a piece of text talking
about next week’s issue, the first one article is about a competition and how the winner
would get an all-expenses paid trip to Paris. The next article is on a professional giving
advice on the finest travel trips. After that is an article on a well-known pilot turning
eighteen. My final article is on how plane tickets were precipitously increasing. The
advertisement on the front page is on a bag that turns into a luggage and the next week’s
issue included an article about an enigmatic plane crash.

One of the visual elements I utilized was shape, the shapes of the boats, deck and
mountains are not rough, instead it is soothing and equable. The salience, salience is the
boats in the centre and to the side of the page because it is in the middle ground and
foreground. It is also the first thing you see apart from the title; this would influence the
buyer to relax and feel the need a vacation. Many of the lines I utilized were round and
flexible, another thing adding to the calming feeling of the magazine, the vectors are the
mountains because it looks like they are a white pathway leading you to the mountains
because it is an example of where you could go on vacation to. The colour blue would set a
serene feeling of the magazine and make the potential buyer feel like they are missing out
on something and that they could be relaxing but they aren’t. I applied the colour white so it
would nicely fit in with the blue and white background. The font I chose on the title is one
that is on many travel magazines so I could make the magazine look realistic and like it is an
actual magazine. On some of the text I made it smaller or bigger so they would look better
and more proficient, likewise I put some of the text in bold to make it look better and more
accurate.

I manipulated the colour blue to represent calmness or serenity to convince whoever saw
the magazine to buy the magazine and a vacation, the colour blue is correspondingly
associated with being peaceful, tranquil, secure, and orderly. The texture of the magazine
was smooth, not rough, or else people who wanted a relaxing vacation wouldn’t be too
enthusiastic to read your magazine because it the magazine cover wouldn’t look very
peaceful, tranquil of secure. This matched the landscape of the of the magazine because it
was also relaxing, it you were to put black there it would not fit, the blue made the
landscape more open and quieter. The photo I applied was portrait and the image of the
boats was angled to make it seem like it is moving further away, the type of shot was a
medium shot, it was not too far away or a close up. Similarly, I involved the colour white in
parts of my photo in the background because white can moreover be calm and neutral but
furthermore elegant. The font colour choice I picked for was white for all the minor articles
and a little bit of black a part of the title because it would be the only colour other than
black, so apart from the size and placing of the title the colour would additionally draw your
eyes to it.

I added a calm, blue background and put the text as white, a neutral but furthermore
heavenly colour. Likewise put boxes around some of the text so they would stand out and
put the more important things in the coloured boxes. Obviously, I depleted blue as the core
colour, this was for the magazine to look relaxed, and also because blue is the most liked
colour out of all colours. Another thing I included was a nice picture for the background and
an eye drawing title that is large and realistic. I similarly adopted a colour that fits with the
travel subject and blends in making it look like a professional magazine. I added some
additional features like a speech bubble to make it seem like everyone says it, and you are
able to trust that you really wouldn’t want to miss out on those places (like the text box
says). Another feature I added was the edition number of the magazine, and a small part of
about next week’s issue. I added the edition number and a bit about next week’s issue, to
make the article look more actual and believable. The edition number makes it look better
and make it seem like they are a lot of editions that it must be very popular and liked by
others.

In summary my magazine’s topic was traveling and target audience was for people who are
interested in traveling but also people who have at least a decent amount of money, I talked
about 5 articles I had on the front cover. I used shape, centre, side of page, salience, middle
ground, foreground, lines, vectors, white, texture, colour, landscape, medium shot, font,
size, placing, core colour, background and large to describe the visual features of my
magazine. I exercised a lot of colour manipulation to manipulate the feeling of the
magazine, adding many small but important features to make my magazine to look real.
Overall, I think I did a fairly decent job, but I could improve on making it more like a
magazine than a poster. p