Sugar, published by Attic Futura, falls into the category of teenage girls’ lifestyle magazine. Competing with many other magazines in the same category, the front cover has to stand out from the whole range of magazines in the shop and grab the audience’s attention. The front cover of this edition attempts to attract its audience through contrasting colours of hot pink, light grey, black and white; the big picture of Selena Gomez dressed in mostly black; the 5 shocking personal interest stories and through the main cover line: ‘Selena shows her dark side’. This cover line, with its intriguing and suggestive connotations, would interest the target audience to the extent that they would feel compelled to buy the magazine to find out what the ‘dark side’ to Selena Gomez – a teenage Disney channel star who’s general image is quite innocent-is. The words ‘Selena shows her’ is presented in small capitals in serif font half-way down the page and to the left and in white, contrasting against Selena’s black top so it will stand out and catch the audiences eye. The words ‘Dark side’ also in capitals are in a contrasting hot pink and a slightly bigger font, and look as if they have been scratched into the cover- coinciding with the theme of Selena having a ‘dark side’. Under that there are the words ‘I still don’t know who I really am’ back in the white, serif font, again contrasting against Selena’s dark outfit.
The up-to-date, youthful style of the magazine is reinforced by the design of one of the advertisement features to make it look like a sticker that has been stuck over the top of part of the cover, in the corner, with light coloured clothes outlined in contrasting hot pink, over the top of the light grey cover background. The words ‘winter whites’ are in white serif font against a black background, which also looks like a sticker stuck on top of the light clothes. This layering effect gives the magazine more depth, and makes it look more intriguing to the audience.
The cover lines positioned at the top left of the page offer ‘5 true stories’, appealing to the audiences need for diversion from their own problems: ‘Mum lets me have sex at 14. So what?’ and ‘Murderers pray at my feet’. As cover lines, these 2 stories have shock value.
The masthead, Sugar, is in lowercase sans-serif pink, connoting fun and unconventionality. It is positioned so that it appears half-hidden behind Selena Gomez’s head, reinforcing the audiences willingness to feel part of an elite group, or club, that recognizes the magazine without the need to see the more conventional full magazine title of its counterparts. The strapline ‘Meet your perfect match: your face+ this hairstyle.’ In black and pink serif capitals above the mast head and overlaid over Selena’s dark hair.
The image of Selena Gomez is conventional for this genre of magazines; she is slightly older than the target audience (13-16), making her a potential role model. She looks out at the audience through the corner of her eyes, in a confident manner and her body is facing sideways to the audience. She wears a dressy, unusual outfit including a black lace top and a green/blue feather skirt. This provides a good background for the hot pink and white writing. Selena has quite dramatic make up on, with black eyeliner which flicks out at the ends, a clear complexion and bright pink/red lipstick, providing an idealized version of the audience, whilst reflecting the idea that she has a ‘dark side.’
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