Conventions of a college magazine front cover

These are both examples of college magazine front covers, I will be analysing them and pointing out good ideas which i can then use on my magazine:

-The date: It is important to include the date on a magazine college front cover as it shows the date it was published therefore telling the audience whether it has any relevance to the current time period.

-The masthead: The Masthead is a fade between green to blue giving the impression it is for a more sophisticated person, it is really relevant to the target audience of secondary students as people say the biggest changes happen in your school years, the fade of the colours may represent the changes in a person during them years. Because the colours are not too drastically different it gives me the impression that the change in the people are not too drastic either just small changes to get the students ready for events later in life.
It is important to show the title as this is how the audience recognise the product, as although everything else usually changes on the magazine front cover, the title always stays the same.

-An image: The first image on the left shows a girl who is dressed in a uniform which makes it quite clear she is a school student, she looks as though she is in a lesson and listening to somebody else's ideas perhaps which is a key point in learning, it is important to listen; to the teacher and your peers. It is important for this magazine to have an image on the front cover which shows some relevance of the information inside of the college magazine. Beside the image is a caption written in pink font which is the stereotypical colour anything to do with girls should be wrote in. The caption says "Do boy's and girl's learn differently?" as t is wrote in pink font and the image is of a girl this could give the impression that girls learn by listening to others for example.
The second image is of two boys, also in uniforms showing they are school students. There is also a caption which goes with this image "Playing to learn". Straight away jusst from looking at the image alone you can see it has something to do about football and school subjects. However i would not use this idea as i would like to attract both a male and a female audience unlike this magazine which i would expect would only attract males and the odd female who was interested in football. The idea i did like about this magazine however was the use of students from different ethnicity's, i would like my college magazine to follow the values of Wyke College which is the college my magazine will be for, one of their values is the acceptance of people from different ethnic backgrounds.

-Plugs: At the top of both of the magazine front covers are three plugs. One of them on each of the magazines is asking a question, this technique is used to tryy and attract and lure the reader into reading the contents of the magazine. In the second magazine front cover the question has an image beside it which also helps to attract the reader. The other two plugs on both of the front pages of the college magazines give an indication like an image of what is included in the contents on the magazine. There is also a further plug on the top college magazine underneath the caption of the main image saying " PLUS Free student cookbooks see page 5", the word "PLUS" is in bold and is in the same font colour ans the masthead drawing attention to it by making it very noticeable. In both of the college magazine front covers the 3 top plugs are in different brightness of shades of pinks, this doesn't work very well for the selling of the top magazine as the image is of a girl and if girly colours are used, male students may not think it has any relevance to them so may not want to read it, whereas in the second front cover where it is all about football and the people in the picture are boys, it brings the opposite sex into the magazine more by using the girly colours, showing it is attracting both sexes.