Genre Codes and Conventions

After analysis some covers, contents pages and double page spreads from some popular professional magazines of the regional lifestyle magazine genre, I have come to the conclusion that they follow certain conventions which allow them to appeal and attract their target audience. In this post I will outline the conventions which the magazines that I have analysed follow, with their covers, contents pages and double page spreads.

Covers

The first thing that all of these covers has in common is the style of the masthead. There is nothing too fancy and there are no graphics used. Instead there is simply just text. The font of the text is not too fancy either and is a simple font which you can easily find on most word processors or graphics packages which you can use to design covers like the ones shown above. one of the mastheads uses a tagline alongside the name of the magazine whereas the other two just simple display the name of the magazine. Only one of the magazines uses a colour as part of the masthead. However, this may because they are trying to attract a different kind of audience than the other two are.

Another similarity between all of the magazines is the colour white features on all three covers. This may be because they are trying to connote that their magazine is the perfect magazine for their readers. Light colours are used on all three of the magazine covers which suggests that I should choose to use these colours when it comes to me designing my cover.

Another convention that all three of these covers follows is that they all use an image as the background of the magazine and then the content is layered on top. This content includes the masthead, feature articles and anything else which features on the cover.

Every background image used on these covers features a location by the sea with two featuring images of beaches and the other one features and image of the seaside town of Looe which is famous for its stunning beaches and typical Cornish setting. They probably all feature these images because the Cornish region is famous for its beaches and tourism. This allows the audience to relate to the magazine. this means I should include this sort of image on the cover of my magazine.

Another convention which all of the covers follow is the inclusion of a barcode in bottom right hand corner of the magazine. The purpose for a barcode is so that when people want to purchase the magazine the item can be scanned by the reader and the price can be easily found from this. In order to make my cover seem more professional I should consider using a barcode.

All of the magazines above feature a couple of different font styles This is something I may consider doing when it comes to me designing my own magazine.

On all of the cover for the magazines there are articles featured specific to the region which they magazine is based in. They also include articles on things to do in the area or local event coming up, which is something I should consider doing when it comes to designing my products.

Contents Page

The first convention which I can see with all of these contents pages is that they all have white backgrounds. This again may be used to connote that their magazine is perfect for their readers. This means that I should use a white background for my contents page when it comes to designing my own products.

Two of the magazines include large main images and two of the magazines includes a series of smaller images. This suggests that the best combination for me to use is a combination of one large image with a series of smaller images relating to some of the articles featured in my magazine.

Another convention they all follow is that they use two pages whether it be a double page spread of two pages back to back. This suggests that there is a lot of content featured in the magazine and they need the space to advertise the articles to the widest possible audience.

Another convention they all seem to follow is that under each article featured on the contents page there is a small description of what the article is about so the audience can easily tell whether or not the article will appeal to them. This may be used because the audience for a lifestyle magazine is so varied they need to feature content which will appeal to everyone. This suggests that I should o this when I come to designing my own magazine.

Here all of the designs are simple and easy to navigate making it easy for the audience to find articles which meet their interest, which is something I feel attracts someone to a magazine. The articles which they have included in the magazine are also relevant to the area which the magazine is based in and are about topics which their primary target audience would be interested in, thus attracting them to the magazine. 

Double page spread

The first convention which I can see is that two out of these three magazines double page spreads uses an image as the background for the page with all other content layered on top of it. This means that when it comes to designing my double page spread that I should consider doing this and when I go and take the photos I need to consider my feature article

Two of the magazines also use little amounts of text rather than big chunks of it. This suggests that they feel large amount of text will bore their readers. This is something I should consider when designing my own products.


The article featured in these double page spreads are all based on topics which the target audiences for these magazine would find appealing. This will attract them to this magazine.