I am going to be carrying out an analysis on an “OK!” magazine, Issue 660, which was published on 10 February 2009. The magazine has been designed to include a small amount of information, but not to reveal too much. First of all, the banner along the top of the magazine includes an incentive; it exclaims “2 FREE MAGS INSIDE – OK! USA AND HOT STARS” This aims to motivate or persuade potential customers to purchase the magazine.
The masthead is instantly notable in its capital, print letters, at the top-left of the page. OK! is plastered along the page and this masthead is also a logo for the famous magazine. The writing is in white to make it stand out from the bright red background and in doing this creates a strong contrast. This masthead/logo helps to distinguish between other celebrity news magazines such as “closer” and “heat”. The connotation of this red colour scheme could be that it is a colour that symbolises beauty and the celebrities on the cover represent a woman’s ideal appearance. Moreover, the red theme could also have a connotation of leadership as the women on the front cover set the latest trends and also aim to set the latest standards. Furthermore, a connotation of the red could be love, to reflect the reader’s passion for celebrity news and also the journalists love for writing columns.
The cover stars of this weekly issue are A-list singers Cheryl Cole and Victoria Beckham. The use of the two celebrities on the front of the cover are almost certain to increase sales for the magazine due to the sheer interest in the pair of chart-topping sensations. The slogan “FIRST FOR CELEBRITY NEWS” suggests that the magazine’s content is purely based on celebrity gossip and all the latest news surrounding them. The barcode is placed at the footer of the front cover as this is more convenient for purchases.
In bright pink, a box can be seen which can be inserting a shape – rectangle tool. On this box, a quote can be seen, which is also known as a buzz word, “…WORLD EXCLUSIVE” this has a denotation of this interview between Cheryl and Victoria being the first interview in the world between them.
A lot of techniques are used on the cover of the OK! magazine that could easily be achieved by using Photoshop. One example of this is how the left of Cheryl’s head is slightly in front of the right side of the masthead. This could be attained by creating layers on the software. This is done by moving the masthead’s layer behind the image of Cheryl and Victoria by going to “Layers” in the bottom-right of the screen, and then dragging the selected layer underneath another.
Also, another technique which is possible to accomplish via Photoshop is the fine line around the smaller images in each bottom corner of the page. These images of Holly Willoughby and Geri Halliwell are preview images of what the magazine contains. The small border around the images can be done by rasterizing the layer which the photo is present on, and entering a stroke. Any colour and size can be created, in this case, medium sized white lines to tie in with the colour scheme. Then, you can choose whether you want the stroke to go on the inside, or outside. In this case it is done on the inside due to the sharp points in the corners, whereas when the stroke is on the outside, the corners are curved.
Furthermore, yet another technique that can be reached with the aid of Photoshop is cutting out someone or something from their original background image and placing them on a completely new image. This can be seen with Holly Willoughby’s image at the bottom-left of the screen. It is visible that her body has been cut out and placed on a completely new background. This can be pulled off by using the “magic wand tool” to delete the background. Other ways of doing this are using the polygonal lasso tool. Then, the rest of the image is placed on the new required background.
No comments:
Post a Comment