Magazine Spread Analysis

My first magazine spread is a confessional about throat cancer. I decided to do this because a confessional is very structured and I had an acquaintance that had had cancer. I did now know until I interviewed John Atkinson that he had had cancer three times but it made the article even better.

Whilst interviewing Mr Atkinson I had questions prepared and I tried to make a timeline as he told his story. This helped immensely when writing the article. I took notes and recorded him whilst he spoke; I then loosely transcribed the interview and combined it with my notes. 

As it was a confessional I tried to get him to remember how he felt during his experiences. I noticed that he seemed very reluctant to try and remember his feelings and at one point I found I had pushed him too far and he needed a break. At this point I did get the feeling that the article, if written right, would show emotions to the reader too. 

When writing the article I kept the main, distinct features of a confessional in mind. That it should be written in first person, should have a general beginning, have drama throughout and that it should end on a high and have the whole story wrapped up in the last sentence. Following this structure meant that I was sticking to the confessional criteria throughout the article. 

Once I had the article I started to put the spread together in Fireworks, I wanted this to look like a confessional in a type of ‘real life’ magazine. To do this whilst making the spread I looked over magazines such as, ‘Pick me Up’, ‘Closer’ and the confessional spreads in ‘Cosmopolitan’. They all stuck to a simple spread of just a couple of pictures, a headline and then columns for the story . 

Some of the magazines had dramatic lines picked out of the story and placed in bold on the page and I decided to do this too. Mr Atkinson had a difficult and shocking experience during his time with cancer and I thought it may help to pull the reader in with the headline, “My Triple Cancer Hell, but I’m still winning!” and bold quotes such as, “a steel plate, staples and stitches held my jaw in place. 

I kept it on a white background to accentuate the words and keep the attention on the article and the pictures of Mr Atkinson. It was quite hard to put the article in columns and keep the columns a certain size, without it all looking squashed and a little boring. I think I managed it well and I do think that this spread could easily be found in a magazine like, ‘Real Life’. 

My second magazine spread is part review/part general feature. I wanted to write something about Rome. It would mean that this spread would draw the reader in with the pictures and the look of the spread as opposed to the story itself. I visited Rome last summer so I was able to use my own pictures, which meant no copyright. 

In class we had no focused on the structure of a general feature so I tried to find my structure in other magazines that I thought my spread would appear in. To get ideas of travel features I looked through Tattler, Cosmopolitan and Marie Claire. In Tattler I found that their spread and introduction was about the Caribbean Islands but they then went in to detail in to each Island and separated them with little lines. I thought that this would be perfect for my travel article. 

I picked four main areas to focus on based on my best pictures. They were Pompeii, The Vatican, Rome itself and the Trevi fountain. As with news I thought that it would be best to write to my best pictures as this would be what pulled the reader in. 

I laid them out in the same way as the spread in Tattler looked and then wrote my article for each section. I did not want to write in first person saying, “I did this,” and “you have to try that.” I wrote in third person giving facts and examples. This meant that the reader would learn about Rome, what there was to do there and how to do it without getting an opinion from the writer. 

This spread would be found in a lifestyle magazine for people that could afford to go on holiday and would look in the magazine for things to do whilst on holiday. I found this spread a lot harder to do than my first with Mr Atkinson as there was not much structure and it was mostly based on the spread itself than the article.

I do not think that both these spreads would be in the same magazine, they are tailored to two different types of magazine reader. The first is more of a real life magazine whilst my second spread is more for a glossy magazine with readers that have money to spend on luxury items.

Please find both my magazine spreads in the previous two spreads.