The Source magazine article analysis

The Source magazine article analysis 

The Source magazine is Hip Hop music, politics, and a cultural magazine, meaning it is a hybrid magazine, the target audience for the magazine is teen boys and young adult males. The layout of this article from The Source magazine is a double page spread, this double page spread is about an American football player DeSean Jackson, this magazine covers this sport because it is a hybrid magazine, and the target audience is for males, and lots of males prefer to watch this type of sport to others. On both pages you have lots of images in which you can see the American football player DeSean Jackson playing the game, you’re able to see the player while you read the feature about him. On the first page of the double page spread you have two images of the American football player, and text on him, and the headline ‘Catch me if you can’, and the stand first telling the reader what the feature is about. The second page of the double page spread has another couple of images of the player, the rest of the text about the player and a pull quote from the text. The feature would draw more males to the magazine than females; this is because more males would like to read about an American football player. On the first page of the double page spread the headline would attract audience to it because ‘catch me if you can’ if a very famous quote, when seeing the headline and then seeing that it is about an American Football player, that you would realize that it is about a player that is extremely fast at running, the readers attention is gained from this large pull quote. The stand first which is a convention that has been followed, on the first page helps the audience to understand what the article is going to be about, so they don’t have to read the whole thing to know what it is about, and helps if the audience don’t like what it is about they can easily flick to another page. The images are used to draw the readers to the article, the bigger the image the more likely it will attract more of an audience, if the reader likes American football they will read the feature because they will enjoy to learn about the player DeSean Jackson. When flicking to this article in the magazine the first thing they will see is the image of DeSean Jackson in the top right corner of the page, which would draw the viewers, there is also a pull quote taken from the text which would also draw the viewers to the article because they will want to learn more about the player.

The audience can keep interest throughout the article by many things that include the images; the images help the readers relate the text to DeSean Jackson, through the images. The images are big and take up a lot of the page, so the reader is more likely to be looking at the images more than the text, which even though they will be looking at the images more will keep them interested in the article. The pull quotes taken from the text keeps the readers interested in the article, by finding out information on the player before you even read the article. The article isn’t really long and the images take up a lot of the page, meaning they won’t get bored of the article and move on to another article. The text is not to complex and that means the reader will not lose interest. Another way that they can keep interest is there is comment make by DeSean and also by people close to him, like him manger and team mates, the comments have been put in the article for the readers to keep interested in the article and so they find out more about him from the people close to him.

When looking at the article I would believe the target audience of the magazine is teen boys and young adults, this is because the article is talking about sport and more men would read the article than women. Another reason that this would be for males in the teens and young adults because of the colours used which is just black, it’s nothing exciting but they don’t need bright colours to keep them interested in the article. The language used in the article is suitable for the target audience because there is no slang used or swear words that most magazines targeted at males in their teens and young adults have, this is because the magazine is centered around an American Football player, so there will not be much slang or swear words that most rock magazines have in when there is a article on a rock band. Even though there is no slang in the article it is still informal, which will also keep the readers interested, because if it was formal the readers will begin to wonder and concentrate on what they are reading about and will become bored.

With this article there is only one colour that is used and that is black, there is only one colour because with the target audience they don’t need lots of colours to keep them interested in the article. But because there is only one colour, they editors do try to keep the readers interested by changing the font of some things, for example the headline the stand first and the pull quotes, they all have different fonts to keep the reader interested in the article and so they don’t get bored.

In conclusion, you can see that this magazine is a male orientated magazine because of the fact that the sport that the magazine is covering is targeted at males. With this magazine article you are able to see that the images and language that have been used are to target at males, everything that has been used within the article has been directed at teen boys and young adult males.