Psychological Analysis: British Men's Magazines
by
M. Murray

The Question

What formal elements are used in UK men’s magazines to draw in readers?

In this paper I will be analyzing the form in British magazines regarding the placement of advertisements, the colors and text layout used in ads and articles, and the page layouts. Through this I will make general conclusions as to how the form is used to attract the reader’s attention. Because of the fact that I was unable to procure American men’s magazines in the UK, I was unable to make a comparison between the two formats.

Methods/ Results: Magazines

I have selected British men’s magazines since another student is doing an analysis of British women’s magazines and I felt this would serve as a compliment. I will look at different British men’s magazines to see what conclusions I can come to in regards to general demographic and how readers are attracted by the format of the magazine. The magazines I intend to refer to are: Loaded, GQ, and FHM. I have selected these magazines because they are the leaders in the market and have the largest reader base according to sales estimates from several newsagents.

Advertisements:

• ads are placed by corresponding articles (eg, CD advertisements near music reviews)
• deep, vivid colors and crisp photography are employed to catch reader’s attention quickly
• most ads rely on a single slogan. There is a relatively low text content otherwise.
• many rely on a single image
• fonts are bold and set in colors that are opposites of the color scheme in the add (ie, red ad, green text)

Articles:

• bold headlines as well as blurbs from the article
• smaller photographs with taglines explaining shot
• larger photographs and cartoons pertaining to subject
• less than 50% of the page is filled with text
• articles often broken into subtopics

Conclusions

Advertisements in British men’s magazines are geared mainly to male oriented products (cologne, cars, razors, etc.) and are designed to pique the reader’s interest with deep colors, surreal images, and bold print. They are just long enough to let the curious read the blurb but without much text that might scare off the potential viewer by the threat of actually having to read. Ads come in several page clusters of related items – for example, movies will be placed next to other related media, like DVD disks and CDs. There are large clusters of ads located in the front and rear of the magazine to greet the reader (the latter, I assume, is for the reader who pages through the magazine from back to front). The images in the ads are geared to appeal to the reader’s curiousity, sexual drive, or self-image.

Articles themselves are designed to draw in readers first by the oversized pictures, then by the text items attached and bold faced titles. The fact that the text takes up less than half of the page increases the feeling of articles being compact, direct, and easy to read in a single sitting. This effect is also accomplished by the subdivisions in the articles, each subdivision easily read in less than a minute.

For More Information/Sources:

• http://www.fhm.co.uk
• http://www.loaded.co.uk