My analysis of magazine colour palettes.

1. Colour Palettes
Cover - Billboard
This colour palette is very bright and the
colours contrast each other a lot. These
colours are masculine colours that would
appear more to males than females. Although
the background is blue, a stereotypical male
colour, having the clothing a burgundy colour
draws the attention of the female eye whilst still
being a masculine ‘feel’. Having the dark
background and clothing allows the text to
stand out more because it’s all white and
yellow.
I like this colour palette but I’m not sure if I’d
use it myself. If I wanted, I would lighten the
colours a little bit, rather than having them so
dark.

2. Cover - Merlito KPOP
This colour palette uses a lot of pink, a
feminine colour. Because of entire page being
pretty much covered in different shades of
pink, this appeals to the female eye much
more than the male eye. It has a light
coloured background, mainly white, and dark
text, dark pink and black, to contrast this and
making is stand out.
I really like this colour palette because it uses
very few colours but it seems like there are
more than there is. I might consider using this
amount of main colours of my cover.

3. Contents - NME
This contents page uses the classic combo of
red, white and black. This is a very common
colour palette across all types of pages. It
uses the white of the background to contrast
the darkness of the black and the brightness
of the red, making all three colours stand out.
These colours don’t really have a stereotyped
gender for them, so this comes across as
multi-gender. But due to the darkness of the
black, it leans more towards the male
audience.
Although they work well together, it’s very
simple and a bit plain. But I like the way that it
uses black for boxes and the main text
alongside the red for page numbers and
things they want to make stand out more.
Maybe I will consider doing something like
what they have done with the red but with a
different colour.

4. Contents - Singles
This colour palette uses a range of pastel
colours. Having the lighter coloured background
allows the black text to stand out. Her dress has
a lot of pastel colours on it and they contrast the
background as her dress is a lot brighter than the
background. The yellow bag draws attention
away from the text and the person because it is a
lot brighter than anything else on the page.
Because of the colours used in her dress,
stereotypical female colours, it’s easy to see that
this is aimed towards females more than males.
I really like this colour palette as it’s really subtle
with the colours but works really effectively
because of the contrast between the pastel, dark
and bright colours. I will consider this when
thinking about my colour palette for my pages,
not just for a contents.

5. Double Page - Billboard
This colour palette is really simple as it uses only four main colours. It uses
the lighter shade of pink as the background and has the darker colours, pink
and black, for the text. It also uses the white from her clothing to make her
stand out from the dark text and the light background. Because of the use of
the different shades of pink, it’s clear that this is aimed towards females.
I quite like this colour palette because it is very simple but is very effective
because it comes across as very dramatic.

6. Double Page - Bromide
This colour palette has a lot of different colours in it, but the main ones are white,
brown and different shades of blue. Although there are darker colours, three of the
tops, it uses white for the text and places it over the darker parts. The background of
floor has different shades of brown due to the shadows. This creates contrast
between the different areas where they lay. Also, having different coloured tops for all
of them allows them to each draw attention to themselves even though most of them
are very light shades.
I really like this colour palette because it’s quite simple even though it uses many
colours. I might consider something like this for my double page rather than a cover
or contents because it would be too busy for either of those.

7. Overall Anaylsis
After looking at the covers, contents and double pages, I have found few things that I
like, what things ‘work’ and common things I have spotted.
I have found the common notion that the background will always contrast either the
text, subject person or both. I saw that either a dark background is used with light
text/images or a light background with dark text/images. Although I have found
exceptions, I found that they didn’t work as well as they maybe should have. But the
Bromide double page example shows a way to use light colours for both the
background, text and most the images. I also found that most pages will use bright
colours. This is causes the audience to notice them most whilst they are on the
shelve. Although they stand out a lot more, I’m not sure I like them as much as pastel
colours. But I do like the Merlito KPOP cover, which uses a lot of bright colours.
Being a female, I prefer more feminine colours to masculine colours. Because of this,
I prefer colour palettes like the Merlito KPOP cover over colour palettes like the NME
contents page. I also like more pastel colours, but I know that they don’t work well on
the cover, maybe I will consider using pastel colours for the contents or double page.
But I like the Bromide double page colour palette and the way it is used and I want to
do something like this for my double page. A colour palette like the Bromide double
page appeals to both the female and male audience, which I’m thinking of using as
my target audience.