The front cover is the magazine's most important advertisement but it also serves to label its possessor.
'A magazine's front-cover image and coverlines are pursuasive selling tools. They motivate readers - confronted with shelves of front covers competing for their attention - to buy our magazine rather than another'. This quote from the editors of Tatlet acknowledges that vast competition which text producers face. It is little wonder then that they go to greate lengths in order to make their particular magazine jump out from the shelves. Visual images, layout and language all play their part. The cover of a magazine helps us to distinguish one magazine from another and although they are constantly changing in order to create variety and keep up to date, they retain sufficient features to mark out their own identity.
The title of the magazine plays a large part in shaping the reader's expectations. It is always written in large letters and is a shorthand way of conjuring up particualr associations in the reader's mind.
Look at this collection of magazine titles. What information about the magazine is suggested by the titles?
You can use a dictionary to help you out. Consider these points:
- Titles can signify a particular character type, e.g. Minx. If you look in the dictionary you will see that this term could be used as an insult: 'bold flirtatious woman'. It seems that Minx has actually taken on positive connotations - this is called amelioration (when a word with megative connotations is invested with positive meaning)
- Pejoration is when words take on negative associations
- Some titles may be compound nouns i.e. it combines two or more words into a single unit. An example is Cosmopolitan - Kosmos and polities.
No comments:
Post a Comment