Good Housekeeping Magazine Analysis

Another women's lifestyle magazine that is on the market is 'Good Housekeeping' which in this edition features Australian singer-songwriter Kylie Minogue. The front cover features a large main image showing Minogue (the shot type being a midshot, showing Kylie in a orange dress with flower details and looking directly at the camera making her seem very confident within herself) and the main coverline stating 'Celebrate being YOU!' which are anchored together by the placement and typography used for the coverline. This tells the audience that this magazine is going to have a large focus on confidence and focusing on yourself. This anchorage is something I hope to include within my own magazine front covers as to make it clear to my audience that my magazine is a women's lifestyle magazine. The colour palette of this front cover is bright with colours such as orange, pink and white. The bright orange, bold 'Good Housekeeping' masthead is seen to be behind the head of Kylie Minogue which draws the readers attention to Kylie Minogue and the coverlines that are placed around her. The target audience for Good Housekeeping is typically women aged 35-70, typically across two generations (e.g mother and daughter) which is quite a wide range for a target audience. This is a target audience aged above what my target audience will be suggesting that some of the elements in Good Housekeeping will not appeal to my magazine readers and will need to be changed in order to please and interest my target audience.

This is the contents page of the Good Housekeeping issue seen above from May 2014. It could be argued that the contents page and front cover are not similar to each other, one reason being that Kylie Minogue is not featured on the contents page but she is on the front page. Another reason is that the colour palette varies between the two pages. However, there are similarities that link the two pages together, one being the typography used on the contents page. This typography is very similar if not the same as the typography used on the front cover, which links the two pages together and creates a correlation. Furthermore, the three headings on the contents page are 'GOOD LIFE', 'LOOK GOOD' and 'FEEL GOOD' which all link to the coverlines on the front cover which further correlates the two pages together. The contents page features images to the right of the page that are linked to further articles later on in the magazine, for example a picture of Carmina Villaroel is labelled 32 on the right side of the page, and correlates to an article on page 32 about Villaroel's 'Sweet Life'. This visual element is something that their target audience must find appealing and engages them into the magazine. Within research I have conducted with my target audience I have also found that they find visual elements very appealing so I will reference this when making my magazine and contents page.