What a Magazine is...

What a magazine is...

A magazine is an A4 booklet, you could call it, filled with information referring to different subjects, such as music, fashion, diets, etc. They hold inside them information, pictures, interviews, real-life stories; things of that nature. If we were to take a music magazine, for example, one I usually read; Kerrang (a rock magazine), you would find things such as advertisements for festivals, information about/interviews with different well-known bands/solo artists such as Foo Fighters or Slipknot. They often include buzzwords/puffs to lure in the audience, such as competitions, free posters (again, with well-known artists on).

You can tell the difference between a magazine and anything else incredibly easily. As I said, they’re like an A4 booklet, they always have a masthead, a picture and usually include cover lines on the right hand side, possibly the left. When you open up the mag, there’ll be a contents page, which is easy to find due to the fact magazines usually have this page labelled. If not, you will know what it is because it will be filled from top to bottom with the contents of the magazine: there will be page numbers in a list down the page and beside these numbers will be what that page(s) will be consist of. For example, besides page 7-8, it could say ‘Interview with [insert band]’, and if you wanted to read that, you would simply flip to page 7 and read on! However, it is not necessary to read the contents page, what many people do is just look through, and wonder what the next page will be about, which is what the beauty of magazines are; you never know what’s going to be on the next page. Let’s take a home design magazine now; you could be reading a page about wallpaper for your living room, and when you flip over the page, suddenly a wild advertisement appears! The possibilities are absolutely endless, as no two magazines are the same. Some may have similar factors but they will never be even wholly similar.

Also, another interesting thing about magazines; let’s say you’re in Tesco or some other supermarket you like, and you walk past the magazine area, you might see a model or an artist you really like on the front page. Do you know what this means? Well it means none other than that there is a high likelihood that the feature article will be about that person whom you love so much!

Magazines are not only just many pieces of paper with words and pictures on them stuck together and thrown onto a shelf though, they’re a medium. They are a way of communication, they’re a way of finding information about anything and everything. The Uses and Gratifications Theory comes into magazines, and it is true that we use them to identify and educate, and for social interaction and entertainment. Magazines are huge in our society and they are so beneficial for us in that we can find out so much more about anything we want, because there are literally magazines for so many different aspects.