Direct address and aspirational cover lines on ‘prima’ magazine’s front page

Prima magazine includes many aspirational cover lines such as ‘our top 20 summer dresses’, this is an aspirational cover line as women aspire to be the best looking person around for a strange competitive reason that has been worked over the years by the media. This both makes women want to buy the magazine for the sake of looking like the norm and also to get the upper hand over other women. This also applies for fashion tips yet by the cover line ‘enjoy summer for free’ I can tell this magazine is for the more down to earth affordable fashion and beauty tips for mothers or older women that just wish to try to keep with the times.

The direct address on this front page is mainly coming from the main image which is a lady whom is looking directly into the camera lens which makes the illusion of her always making eye contact with you. This makes the customer feel more involved in the magazine and are possibly compelled to look at the magazine as it appears to be looking at you. The cover line ‘you look gorgeous’ makes the reader feel confident and possibly more inclined to reading the magazine due to this compliment.

Denotation and connotation of prima magazine front page layout

The front page of prima magazine consists of the regular lifestyle magazine layout including a: masthead, selling line, dateline, main image, model credit, bar code, the cover lines, the main cover line and the left third which contains the majority of the cover lines, due to shelf stacking. Here is an image of what these words mean. 

Prima’s front page has the selling line of ‘JOIN IN & WIN! Puzzles …. Competitions & cash prizes’ cover lines include ‘ our top 20 summer dresses’ ‘you look gorgeous 72 top-to-toe beauty tips’ ‘TOO SHY TO ASK YOUR GP?’ and many more. It’s masthead is obviously ’prima’ and its dateline is secured under the title. From this we can tell it is not a sexual magazine like cosmopolitan as its selling line is about puzzles and prizes. We can also tell that it is a fashion and beauty with the cover lines of ‘top 20 dresses’ and ‘72 top-to-toe beauty tips’. The main image is of a healthy woman whom some other women may consider idealistic which may persuade women to read the magazine as most women do seek to be idealistic and the dateline, bar code and model credit is fairly straight forward and self explanatory.