Evaluation Of The Norms From My Format Research

After evaluating three different school magazine covers in my format research, I can conclude that most magazines share the same norms, but despite this there are some differences in norms in the three school magazine front covers.

From my format research, you can see that the Mast Head on every front cover is at the top of the school magazine. This consistency of the position of the Mast Head has convinced me that for my school magazine front cover, I will position my Mast Head at the top of the page. The first thing I was drawn to when researching these magazines was the Mast Head as I always look at the top of the page first, thus I am going to position the Mast Head at the top of my front Cover. I also found that two of the three front covers from my format research shared the same norms of the Mast Head. Both were big, bold and colourful so stood out very clearly. I have decided that for my front cover, I will make my Mast Head Big and bold so it will stand out more and catch the reader's eye easily.

Two out of the three magazines I analysed had just one main image, but one of them had three different images without one as its background. For my front cover, I have decided not to defy convention and use a main image as the background of my front cover. In fact, I will partly defy convention as I will use smaller images as well as the main image as this will help my magazine stand out more. Each of the images in each of the three magazines in my formate research all related to the purpose of the magazine. This instantly gave the reader a very good idea as to what the magazine will contain and could be a deciding factor as to whether or not they read the magazine or not.

All three of the magazines I analysed in my format research all has contrasting styles of text to one another. Despite this two out of the three front covers were more similar to one of them which defied convention and did not follow the common pattern of text used in the other two front covers. Two out of the three front covers had big and bold font which helped the text to stand out to the reader more and attract more attention to itself. The front cover which defied convention just had plain boring text in a small font size which did not catch the readers eye and looked very dull. The two that shared the common norms were the most successful in catching the reader's eye and standing out clearly with the use of big and bold text in a colourful font.

Two of the front covers that I analysed in my format research shared the same norms. Both of the magazines audiences were both aimed at students of the school, whereas the other one defied convention and was aimed at parents. The two magazines that were aimed at students were definately more informal than the magazine aimed at parents and both contained big, colourful font with a large picture which helped the magazines to stand out. On the other hand, the magazine which was aimed at parents had small images and a smaller font which did not stand out as much as the other two magazines.