A comparison between a Cosmopolitan article and the final draft of mine.



Since the last double page spread I analysed would not scan properly I have compared my latest and final draft to another double page spread. This will also highlight new similarities.

Firstly the title of my text was mainly black, with some words in red and some in bold, to draw the audience’s attention to the key focus. The Cosmo article did this also, but used blue instead. The font was much larger for the title in Cosmo, with the introduction in a smaller font, and the rest of the article in an even smaller font size. This was also the pattern for my font sizes. The Cosmo article, like mine, also mainly had black font. However, it also contained white font for the blue boxes, and blue font for the headings in the white boxes. My articles main text was placed inside red boxes, the other article similarly placed the bulk of the text in white or blue boxes, though there were more boxes/text than in mine. This is due to my article also being a fashion piece; conventionally fashion articles have less text and more pictures.

My article contained multiple photos. There were two long shots and one mid shot of a female model, one high angle shot of the writer, and one over the shoulder shot of a girl with an insulin pump. There were also photos, cut out from their background, of clothes and bags. The Cosmo articles used three main photos. One was a long shot and was sued as the background for the right page, while the other two consisted of one close up and one mid shot. These were smaller on the page, similar to the size of my images. Though one of my long shots o the model was cut away from its background a spanned the length of the page.

The layouts were similar in both articles. The title was placed at the top of the left page, with an introduction underneath, and the smaller photos fitted around the text which was mainly placed in boxes. The magazines name was mentioned in my article in a speech bubble at the top right of the right page, whilst Cosmo did not use any shape to put the text in. Cohesion was created by both of the articles by using the same simple colour theme for both pages. Blue and whit was used for Cosmo, while my article had red and blue. Mine also had a blue wave that continued over the bottom of both pages, lining up at the centre.

Audience appeal was created in both magazines by using pictures that related to the target audience, for example models were the same age and gender. The mixture of bright colours and many images created an exciting and modern looking article which appealed to the young audience. By splitting the bulk of the text up into boxes this also stopped the article from overwhelming the young audience. Relevant issues were also discussed in both articles which would interest and relate to the audience.

Both articles followed conventions by having page number placed at the bottom corners of the pages: on the right for the right page and on the left for the left page. The use of large title by the top of the left page, as well as a good mix of text and images, plus the use of bright colours, were also conventional. Finally both articles had a lot of content, leaving little of the blank white of the page showing.