Double Page Spread Analysis

This double page spread has been taken out of FourFourTwo magazine. The audience that this magazine looks to target is social band class C1-E as football is seen as a working class sport and is followed by teenagers and children, who are likely to be unemployed. This interview consists of one of England’s up and coming stars breaking through into the men’s first team squad. This is mainly aimed at males with females as a secondary target audience. There would also be another secondary audience of C-B band class of older male, as the language used is quite sophisticated and these males are likely to also have an interest in football.

The masthead is follows common conventions and is approximately 1/8 of the page and continues the colour pallet seen on the front cover. The masthead reads, “Bring on Brazil!” this has been designed so that it is loud and boisterous. This connotes football because football fans are often described in this way. It also shows that the players are raring to go and that will excite fans into reading this article.

In terms of layout the common conventions are followed because there is a main image on one side with the text on the other side. The colour pallet consists of 3 main colours; blue, white and black. These are all colours that feature in the England kits so this article can be directly associated with the England national football team. This follows common conventions of a magazine. You may expect to see more colours as the lower end of the target audience is fairly young, but it also has a higher ended target audience than most other football magazines so that has been taken into consideration too. The star vehicles in the image are the players that the article is referring to with their success of breaking into the national squad. All of the players are modeling to look very happy an dpositive, which will install hope into the fans that they could potentially win the World Cup, in Brazil. On the right hand page, there is text with a couple of other images. This is what you would expect to see, but perhaps not that much text. Once more, both the older and younger audiences are taken into consideration with the weighting of images to text.

The lexis is fairly simplistic which will appeal to the younger audience and the supposedly ‘unintelligent’ stereotype. In terms of the interview style, the Q and A appeals to all target audiences as they are able to pick and choose which questions they answer. The lexis used all connotes football and building anticipation for the World Cup.

 “Consumer practice developed as a pre-eminently feminine province” Osgerby. This quote is saying that the reader has developed this idea of males being able to pose for magazine shoots has been developed by all of the female magazines around. This magazine applies to this theory as the 5 males on the left side of the page are all posing and it is not frowned on. This is becoming more popular through out the sport of football.

This double page spread has been taken out of FourFourTwo magazine. The audience that this magazine looks to target is social band class C1-E as football is seen as a working class sport and is followed by teenagers and children, who are likely to be unemployed. The main interview on this double page spread is with a retired footballer, Dennis Bergkamp and his footballing career. This would mainly be aimed at males with females as a secondary target audience. There would also be another secondary target audience of social band C-B, older males. This is so because the language used is relatively sophisticated and are likely to also have an interest in football.

The main masthead follows common conventions as it approximately 1/8 of the page. This masthead continues the colour scheme from the front cover, once more following conventions of this type of media product. The masthead reads, “One-on-one.” This is a term that plays on two meanings, as it is a one on one interview, but it also a footballing term and it can be closely related with this particular player, as he was a striker who encountered many one on one’s. This will appeal to the genre because they will recognise the term one on one and assume that it is an interview with a famous striker, which will draw their attention to it.

In terms of layout, this article follows the conventions you would expect to see as one side of the page is an image with a small amount of text and the other side consists of the interview. The pages are well organised and not scruffy which is something you don’t expect to see, but with this magazine is more appropriate that there is some sense of order in the layout, due to the secondary target audience it has of older football fans.  The colour pallet consists of 3 main colours, red, white and black. This again follows conventions, as you would expect to see a colour pallet of around 3-5 colours. The colours connote football as collectively they connote desire and passion. As well as this, red and white are the colours of the shirt that the player being interviewed played for, Arsenal. This would represent the target audience because they are colours that have connotations that can be linked with football and they are colours worn by many well-known football teams, as well as the English national team. This refers to Hall and Holmes theory that, “ Any media text is created for a particular audience and will usually appeal most to this target audience,” (Hall and Holmes 1998.)

There is one main image, that takes up the whole of the right hand page, with a smaller secondary image that is next to a fact file and helps to break down the text on the left hand side and lower the text to image ratio. The main image is a medium close-up shot and has one main star vehicle, which is the subject of the interview. The secondary image is a long-range action shot of the player, playing football. This is what you expect to see as the text to image ratio is around 50:50 which is something often seen in football magazines. The use of a large image stands out to football fans as they can easily recognise the star vehicle and this may entice them into reading the article. “Consumer practice developed as a pre-eminently feminine province,” Osgerby. This quote is saying that the reader has developed this idea of males being able to pose for magazine shoots has been developed by all of the female magazines around. This magazine applies to this theory as the male on the right hand side of the page that is posing and it is not frowned upon. This is becoming more popular through out the sport of football.

The lexis used is fairly simplistic which would appeal to football fans, the target audience, as they are seen as, “Unintelligent.” The lexis used is specific jargon that shares the semantic field of football. The masthead is an example of this as, “One-on-one,” has two meanings in the way it is used. As it is referring to the interview, which is a one on one, but it also refers to the subject of the interview who would have encountered many one on one situations, in his striking career. You would only notice this play on words if you were a football fan, so lexically this appeals to the target audience that is being represented. Similarly to this, the language used through out the interview has a semantic field of football and includes things that you may only understand if you follow the sport.