Magazine Cover Review

 Magazines are truly based off of the cover. They say to ‘never judge a book by its cover’, but that’s exactly what you do when you want to pick out a magazine. The main purpose someone picks out a magazine is because they are intrigued by the bold lettering on the cover and the attractive celebrity on the front. With each magazine being directed towards a specific audience, there is an extreme bias on each cover. The magazine covers directed towards women sometimes shows how they want to look when they put a hot and skinny model on the cover. Magazines just need to keep the viewer interested on the cover long enough to get them to buy the magazine. I feel like the viewer could care less about what’s on the inside, unless they buy it for a personal reason, like how one of the stories stood out to them, but the rest of them aren’t as interesting. According to the article, people tend to scan over the article more than actually reading them. They call it “page surfing”, and it is used to find what the viewer wants to see and block out what the viewer doesn’t care about. To back up my statement, the article we read stated “Most magazines now resemble movie posters more closely than they do the dry pages of a book. They are filled with color, oversized headlines, graphics, photos, and pull quotes. The gray text page, once a magazine staple, has been all but banished by a new breed of art directors who have gradually made their way up the masthead.”  This was to attract younger viewers, but they are still watching the television over reading a magazine. 

Magazines used to provide news, but in order to keep viewers interested, they transferred over to topics for younger crowds, like celebrity news, or ways to make your body more attractive. “its ‘unholy combination of erudition and sex.’ But the new magazine struck a chord just as Maxim would years later, with an edgy, funny tone, sexy pinups, and practical advice about picking up women. While Esquire targeted the would-be sophisticate, Maxim went after man's animal instincts with the same formula. It found an untapped market. As Outside's Espen puts it, ‘They drove a beer truck into a crowd of thirsty guys.’ There is nothing stopping those thirsty guys, once quenched, from reading, and little evidence that they won't do just that.” This quote from the article proves that magazines are targeting their audience with what they want their ideals to be. For women it’s more of a feminine tone, for men it is more masculine. The magazines are very sexist, but that’s how it has to be if they want to attract a lot of viewers in order to make more income than competing magazines.