Magazine Layout Analysis

By Chris Bailey

BBC TopGear MagazineTopGear magazine is the number 1 motoring magazine in the UK, which isn’t surprising considering the TV show is the most watched factual program in the world. Aimed at males aged 8

to 80+ its target audience is massive. Featuring beautiful cars, hilarious challenges, buying guides and motor news, it’s got a

subject for everyone with even a mild interest in cars.

The front cover begins as usual, with a large and bold masthead recognizable across the globe with integrated ‘BBC’

branding. The words are covered partially by two very attractive cars. The Ferrari placed slightly above the masthead

is quick indicator to the target audience/magazine browser that this magazine is about cars as it peaks out from behind other

magazines. There is a very large cover line in the middle of the page. This is telling the audience about some of the best

content in the magazine, the piece that will attract the audience to buying and reading the magazine. There are a

series of images and texts at the bottom called blobs and stars. These are 4 small sub stories that are showing the audience

more of the magazines interesting content, including images and texts which look impressive and entertaining for the reader.

The main image on the front cover is very ‘in your face’, the car takes up an entire chunk of the page, and even covers some the title and one set of cover lines. The images used on the

bottom appeal in multiple ways. Firstly 2 of the cars are very high priced dream cars, something people will look at to aspire

and admire. The other 2 cars are more reasonably priced and possible for the readers to purchase, at least one day. People

will be drawn to these articles if they want a fast and fun hatchback that can be used as a daily car.

The font used for the title is very bold and has an italic slant. The boldness quickly captures peoples attention and the italics represent speed. The logo is also different to the TV show logo, it is missing the blue sprocket usually placed on the left of the

words. This saves space and gives the logo a sleeker and more modern look. The cover lines are in a more blocky font, the

letters are also placed closer together, creating a very dense and impactful visual.

BBC TopGear MagazineThe first page of this double page spread is made almost completely out of images. The images show the TopGear rally car

(Hyundai i20 WRC) racing through dirt tracks, with a single image taking up over half the page. This image will quickly grab someone’s attention, especially when they are flicking through the pages. The placement of the images make the double page spread very busy and cluttered looking, this suits the exhilarating type of style they are taking with this

Wales Rally article. There is a very effective pull quote on the right hand page “We spear off the road…I keep it planted and hope”. This quote is quite comical yet also sounds like a really impressive moment. There is a slight colour scheme being followed with the use of some yellow borders and text highlights, this is quite subtle but holds the page together

visually as the rest is very rugged. This divides the messy looking pages from other messy cartoon or celebrity magazines.

Visuals matter a lot to those who watch

TopGear, the first ever series was purely for those who wanted to

know everything about the cars, but as the show grew and relaunched it’s

audience became predominantly those who

don’t know much about the technicalities of cars,

they mostly knew that faster is better and

caravans need to be destroyed.

This shows in the magazine pages as they

are very dense with imagery. The audience

are much more interested in seeing

images of ‘sick skids’ than engine layouts and

technical information. There is brief technical

information amongst the text but much less than

other car magazines such as ‘Modified Mag’.

There are lots of different fonts on the page in different sections. Some appears very intellectual and reserved where as others are bolder and louder. This different series of fonts is smartly used to express the content of what is is explaining.

The pull quote font is very impactful, tall and static, this is expressing the sudden moment when they lost control and all he could do was try to power it out.

Chat Magazine

Chat magazine is a popular gossip magazine aimed at women in their 40s. The magazine contains a series of content focusing on odd true stories from around the world.

The front cover, similarly to other magazines in its style such as heat magazine, adopts a very cluttered approach in its front cover lay out. The large- bold and italic masthead is placed high up to stand out upon other magazines, the high placement also makes it visible above other mags when stacked.

There are numerous blobs and stars scattered amongst the front cover, such as “Exercise made me OBESE!”. 6 of these on the front page are used to intrigue a reader. Each blob and star are shown in slightly different little boxes, some are different colours and other differences such as torn edges as though it is behind the cover. These all add to the cluttered effect and make the viewer feel like there is loads of interesting content inside.

The main image on the front cover is of a woman smiling cheerfully as if she has been told something funny. Each edition of chat magazine has an image of a woman laughing or smiling, likely to give a sense of happiness and entertainment.

The fonts used are all very bold and tall, this almost creates the effect of shouting to get the viewers attention. As though each story is fighting for the attention.

The first page of the double page spread is half taken up by an image of the main subject in the story, a woman with an unsettling story to

tell. Seeing the large full body image of the woman will create a much more real and personal feel to the story about to be written, by seeing the actual woman who was effected by the story. The title of

the story is very bold and spreads across 2 pages. The fonts and colours differ in the same title in order to amplify the ‘By My Dad’ part

of the title, due to its severity. The story being told contains a lot of text and is condensed into small spaces surrounded by imagery, pull quotes and sub story sections. This dense style is frequent throughout the magazine and creates a ‘juicy’ feeling in the amount of content contained within each page. Although the images used are not appealing in any way, they mix with the text to create much more to focus on to reduce the risk of the reader losing attention the magazine.

There is a lot of red used over

the page, which similar to the

dense and cluttered style, is

used all throughout the magazine. This

suggests a common house colour in ‘Chat’

magazines to make the

content more recognisable and

attractive to frequent

readers. Texts are often

coloured in red or against a red

background, this makes them

stand out greayly and pulls

the readers attention

towards them.

Magazine Successfulnes

sA successful magazine will not only generate a keen supply of

income for the creators and distributors but also do it consistently. Weekly released, or monthly released magazines will aim to have each first time buyer buy the magazine again and again, this will

create an ever growing and consistent flow of income. Success can also be based on how much advertisers are willing to pay for your

page spaces, the more an advertiser is willing to pay, the more successful your magazine has become due to it’s ability to create

profit from advertising space as well as purchases.