Essay question

The Marie Claire magazine uses visual codes to establish the target audience. Ashley Olsen,who features on the magazine, the use of a celebrity appeals to any of their fans influencing them to buy the magazine. Ashley Olsen is dressed in a midnight blue dress, the midnight blue ties in with the title giving a sense of consistency, midnight blue also connotes passion which links with Ashley Olsen's feature "Ashley Olsen on style passion". Ashley Olsen is photographed 'smising' at the camera, this is both a seductive yet pretty pose. This draws in a potential audience of women who see Ashley as a role model or aspire to look like her. Her make up and the way her hair is done will appeal to stereotypes of women that only care about appearance, as using Ashley on the cover represents the whole magazine to be about beauty, make up, and fashion which are all categories women are stereotyped as being interested in.

The form of the text is a magazine which is clear from the conventional layout. A large maste head at the top along with smaller captions and features around the edges with a large photo as the main focus. The font used is quite a hard straight font that's stylish and professional linking with the genre of the magazine, the consistency throughout establishes the professionality and success of the magazine. The language used also establishes the genre and audience of the magazine. "Best beauty buys" the use of alliteration is a language device used to persuade the audience into buying the product. Beauty is a key word that engages women and ties in with the theme of the magazine.

The Woman's Health magazine uses visual codes to establish the audience. The main focus of the magazine is the picture on the front page. The skinny healthy woman is centred drawing in the audiences eye. The woman is sweeping her hair back which has made her top rise revealing her flat stomach. The aesthetically pleasing woman portrays herself as healthy and nutritious which can appeal to a female audience as a typical stereotype abouth woman is that they want to me healty and slim. The healthy woman links to the name of the magazine, and the whole purpose of the magazine to help and guide woman into being healty. The language used emphasises this, "quick recipes healty and tasty" these of the word quick appeals to many woman especially mums as they don't always have much time, healthy re in forces the theme of the magazine and tasty appeals to everyone's senses.

The magazine also has a conventional layout with a large heading, with blue font, the coloour blue is often stereotyped as a masculine colour which challenges the female audience of the magazine. However blue does signify peace, cleanliness and health all linking to the main purpose of the magazine.