Top of the Pops magazine contents analysis

Top of the Pops magazine contents analysis 

Top of the Pops contents page is very different when comparing to other magazines like NME and Kerrang, this is mainly because top of the pops is a pop music and fashion magazine, making it an hybrid magazine, with a target audience of  young pre-teens. The layout of this magazine is very different to other magazines, the contents page has sections for different things, for example; ‘Celebs & Gossip, We love Shopping and All about you,’ this suits the target audience, this helps them so that they are not confused to what goes with what. The sections are placed separate boxes on the page, separating them from the images on the page, and the background of the contents page. The title of the magazine ‘inside the mag..’ is in bold white writing, making the text stand out in front of the pink background. The font of the text is as if someone had written it themselves, which connotes the target audience of the magazine, because the target audience wouldn’t expect something formal, it would be informal because the target audience is only between  the age group of 10 to 15.

The contents page has various different images that include an image of young boy band One Direction, images of different fashion accessories, which reflects hybrid nature of magazine and an image of  Miranda Cosgrove, with these images the target audience would want to know more about why they are in the magazine and what for. The image of One Direction is at the bottom right corner of the page and is bigger than the rest of the images, this is because as the target audience are girls aged 10 to 15, they would be attracted to them and would want to know more about them.

The colour scheme of the Top of the Pops magazine is very bright and colourful, the colours used are pink, yellow, white and black. The writing on the contents page is in black, and only some of the writing is in white like the headline, the yellow is to highlight important things that the target audience might especially want to read. The pink plays an important role in the contents page, as it is more a girly colour and Top of the Pops is a girls magazine, pink is used for the background of the headline, and for the numbers of the articles, the pink is to highlight things that the reader will want to know.

One thing that Top of the Pops contents page does is they take an image of the cover page and the cover stories have arrows pointing at them with the number of the page, to what that article is, this helps the audience find where the article is that attracted them to the magazine a lot quicker, and  it is a lot easier for the young target audience to navigate through the magazine.

You can see that the main focus of the magazine is music and fashion because you have articles on artists and bands, and a section for fashion. When looking at the images you can see even some of the images are of artists and bands, and the others of fashion accessorises. When looking at one of the images you can see that the magazine involves music because the image as a artist singing into a microphone. I like the layout of the magazine as it is simple and not confusing, you can easily see that the target audience of the magazine if for girls aged 10 to 15 because of the colours used on the cover, the fashion section and the images on fashion accessories. I don’t think that the contents page would need to be changed in anyway, I think this because it suit’s the target audience really well.

When looking at this music magazine you are able to see how a young target audience is represented instead of the usual target audience for music magazine of teenagers and young adults. With this magazine you can see how they use colours, images and the layout of the contents all relates to the target audience, and how the target audience will relate to the images ect.