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.

Contents Page Analysis

This is the contents page of Four Four Two magazine which is a football magazine. It's primary target audience would be social band C1-E because football is seen as a working man spots, although it is watched and played by people from other social class bands. The primary target audience gender would be male, with the secondary audience being females. The primary age would be 16 years old and on wards. As these are the main ages that buy these magazines. The secondary target audience would be any other football fans, of any age.

The masthead has not been put on this particular magazine. It is often a convention that companies will put the mast head on the contents page, however this magazine is very well known and doesn't need to have the masthead on the contents page to be recoqnised.

The magazine layout is fairly simplistic, as it has one large picture of the right hand side of the page and a large picture at the bottom of the page. This draws the reader into the main story as that it was the picture is linked too. On the bottom photo which takes up around 1/3 of the page it has a crowd of people with the words "season preview" this means it is telling the readers about the ideas and tactics the team will use to begin the new season. This would interest them as they could know what a certain team is doing and incise them into reading more. With the layout there is a block of writing positioned to the left of the pictures. That includes the articles that are included in the magazine and what pages they are on. That would interest a reader, as they would want to know what is included in the magazine they have just bought also to know their way around the magazine.

There is a 6 colour pallet (red, blue, yellow, pink, black and white). That is high for a magazine but is the right number for a magazine aimed at children as it attract them into it. Using the bright vibrant colours as well is a good choice. Using the black background on the main image with the white writing on it makes it stand out more to a reader as its using opposites.

The lexis choices are the right choice for their audience as there isn't a lot of words and the words are short. Perfect for children because they won't want to read alot and just look at pictures. The words that are on the contents page are names of clubs and players. That would then attract the fans of those player and clubs to turn to those pages and read about their teams. The word "Contents" isn't on the contents page, which is not following the conventions of a magazine, as the readers wont know what page they are on.

The main image is of Pep Guardiola, he is a manager of the club Barcelona that is why the Barcelona badge has been put on the picture. In that year he won the league and was a well-distinguished manager in that year. Most people would recognise him that is why he is the main image. There is a quote by him that reads "My pride and ambition are enormous" this is key for a manager as he respects himself and will be able to achieve great things. This would inspire the youth that they could achieve things that he could. The badge is next to his name to show was club he is linked to. The badge is relatively big compared to the actual picture of him. That would appeal to the fans of that club.

"Youth as fun, youth as trouble maker" This links too the sport of football in general has the stereotype of fans is to be hooligans and cause trouble. In theory the youth of today will follow that stereotypes to fit in and make friends. This magazine would have linked to the fun part of the quote as they are using the magazine for a source of entertainment.

This contents page is from Golf magazine. Golf magazine is a very prestigious golf magazine that has been running for many years. I decided to analyse this contents page to get an idea of the conventions held by sports contents pages. The primary target audience for this magazine would be males in the social class bands A-B, usually aged 30 and over. This target audience is because this age range predominantly plays the sport as the game has a slow pace and takes a long time to complete, so is more leisurely than most sports. The secondary target audiences would be males that are younger than this age range or females or this age range.

The layout of this magazine is very organised and tidy and has a different section of the page listings for each category.  The page listings are down the left hand side of the page with 4 images to the right of this, which highlight the main stories within the magazine.  There is a great sense of organisation about this contents page and this is a convention of this genre of contents because it connotes the older target audience, who are stereotypically more organised and tidy. Another convention of sports contents pages in terms of layout is to have a handful of images that represent the main stories in the magazine, this is done because it helps the reader to visualise the story and make the reader more interested. This is common within sports magazine because it helps the reader get to know who/what the story is about, so that they can recognise it again it they saw it.  Page numbers are also a common convention of contents pages, as they are used so that the reader can navigate through the magazine with ease. Another common convention of contents pages is to have the title of the magazine and the word “contents” at the top of the page with the date and issue of the magazine. This contents page have the mast head from the cover in the top left of the magazine with the word “contents” in the top left.  The colour pallet uses 3 main colours, red, white and black, which once more is a convention of magazine contents pages. There aren’t lots of colours as an older target audience will not be as interested in that. The use of colours that connote, passion, competition and purity are often seen on sports magazines. The font used is a very professional and sophisticated font. This attracts the target audience as they are of an older age and a higher class band and this typography helps to attract the target audience because it makes the magazine have a more professional and sophisticated feel.

In terms of images, there are 4 images that represent the main stories that are within the magazine. 3 of the images are long action shots of some professional golf stars are performing and a final landscape picture of a well known golf course. These images are used to draw the readers into the stories and to break up the page, so that it is easier on the eye. It also target the secondary target audience of younger up and coming golf fans who won’t be interested in a page full of words. Each image is also labeled with the story, separately to the list on the left hand side; this represents the target audience as they like things to be organised and simple.

The lexis choices are small with limited words. There are sentences explaining shots and words of just players. This is good for a contents page as the main writing will actually be on the article. The writing is just explaining in brief terms what is in the article later in the magazine. There is a specific semantic field of golf in with specific jargon used that only golf fans would understand including, “The range” and “front 9.”