What are the conventions of magazine page layout?

Whilst flipping through a magazine such as Empire, Total Film, and Sight and Sound one can’t help but notice an eye-catching film review. These magazine’ purpose is to attract various audiences, with its glossy pages packed with colorful images which allow the reader; be it a young adolescent or an adult to have a much more visual experience. The written codes in a magazine article are communicated through the language used. The key area one must think about is the publication’s mode of address: the way it ‘speaks’ to its audience. It its most simple form, this could be very formal or very casual. It may be humorous or serious, chatty or professional. The types of words selected and style and complexity of sentences used are how the mode of address is identified. The review keeps a balance between informing the audience of the films, keep a positive outlook on it (no matter how rubbish they think the film is) and focus on not giving too much of the film away.










Different types of fonts and typography are also incorporated in the review. A font is the style of character selected to create the words. The selection of fonts can give a magazine its character and identity. Fonts can also suggest if a publication is serious or fun. Typography refers to the way text is laid out on the page: size (pt. 14, upper/lower case), spacing, line length etc. an article in a publication will normally use more than one font and typography, but these will follow a formula set out by the ‘house style’, e.g. all the headlines will be in the same font and size in articles. The headline style is technically part of typography. However, choices made about headlines can affect the way an article is read. Headlines in block capitals add urgency. One is not advised to use block capitals all throughout the text; it ends up making the text more difficult to read than if it were written in standard title case. However, this urgency can be reduced by writing in lower case, with only the first letter of each word capitalized. Some publications use ‘strap lines’ either above or below the main headline. This is a smaller headline that adds more detail.
A subheading is a means of visually breaking up a longer article to make it more digestible. They can also be used to pick out a particular feature of the story in the main body of the article – i.e. ‘breakout paragraphs’. This is done to draw the audience’s attention to whatever they are interested and its purpose also is for esthetic reasons; to fill up space on the page.
In most of the magazines the pages are spilt into columns. The number of columns on a page will vary according to magazine. The main text will be contained within single columns, where as introduction sentences or ‘extra’ information (often contained in ‘breakout boxes’) may spread across two or more columns. This varies according to whom it is written for, i.e. Sight and Sound has smaller text and more columns, as it focuses more on the written context, rather than to entertain, whereas the ‘Sound’ magazine layout usually only consists of two columns, which makes it easier to read; making it more manageable. The difference in the amount of writing will also affect the type of audience who read the review.
The magazine review should also consist of a photo. It is usually a screenshot of the film or the promotional image. The amount, type and layout of photographs have a significant effect on the way an article is read. In the west, our normal visual reading pattern is to scan the page from top left to bottom right. However, when flicking through a magazine our eye is more readily drawn to the right-hand page – this is why adverts set on the right hand cost more than those set on the left. Therefore an eye catching image placed on the right hand page can catch our initial attention, and start us scanning the text from the left hand page down.