LIAAR ERC

East Riding College magazine LIIAR analysis

Front cover

 The magazine front cover for East Riding College isn’t very appealing or eye catching to a viewer. The colour scheme is very dull and serious looking despite sticking to a house-style. The fact that the front cover is black and white causes it not to catch the viewer’s attention. The image used is not in MCU causing it to be even less eye catching, but the colours in the image do link with the house style as there are dark shadows on the students causing a silhouette which stands out on the snow which is white linking to the house-style black and white. The caption on the image does explain what is happening in the image with a linking page number. The fact that the image is set in Berlin on a trip does link with the layout as it seems very Bauhaus in design. Although this does not link to what the college is about and more about the trip in Berlin which is shown in the image. The magazine was published for spring term 2010, which does not link to the image used which has no date listed to when the image was taken. Also there is a snowy setting which is not normally associated with spring. The masthead is dominant and stands out with it being large and the opposite colour to the background. Although the masthead is boring and could have been improved my making the area around the masthead more busy and filled as these is blank space, this would make the magazine seem as if it had more features, it would be more appealing. With the magazine being free it should be shown more exiting and have more qualities that draw in a viewer to take the time to pick up and read it, with it being free it’s a case of weather it is worth picking up. The most dominant feature is the masthead ‘student life’ which does link with the image as it includes an activity that college students are taking part in, which literally is ‘student life’. The college logo is incorporated in the bottom right hand corner, this could have been better placed at the top of the page as the organization producing the magazine. In the bottom right hand corner the information on the bottom left could have taken the bottom rights place showing what the magazine includes better, as the bottom right is where attention is drawn when turning a page. The magazine would be targeted at students who either attend the college or do not and would like to look into what happens at the college for advertisement. Therefore the target audience is aimed mainly at the 16-18 year old group, mainly college students that attend East Riding College as it is split into terms as a sort of news magazine. The front cover looks as if it was made by students at the college for people of the college, keeping a fairly fixed target audience.

Contents page

The contents page does not stick to the house colours, the contents is nothing like the front cover in design nor is the font used in the heading of ‘contents’ the same as the front cover masthead. There are thumbnail images scattered around the page, all are images of activities but have no captions so the viewer has no clue what the images are about or if they are even linked to the magazine. The images could have been linked to the page numbers if no caption was needed. There is very vague information about the magazine on the contents page; the contents of page numbers could have been split into categories to the audience can find what they are looking for. The titles for the page numbers are not well explained and could of contained more information. The use of ‘….’ Makes it look very messy and could of easily been replaced by more information. The layout looks nothing like the front covers house style and could of easily been a part of a completely different magazine if the audience were to see both pages separately. This could have been solved by sticking to the house-style keeping continuity on the front cover or could have contained the college logo. The use of colours are good in drawing the viewer to the contents despite it not having continuity from the front cover.