ehow.com on magazine covers:

More from ehow.com:

Ideas from slideshare.net:

- The magazine’s name should be clearly displayed

- The cover has to be noticeable to the audience

- Famous actors/images are used as a focal point

- Certain images attract a certain audience

- Graphics and colours are used to create a mood for the magazine

- Font size, shape and colour are used creatively to suggest different ideas

- Several cover lines dotted around the page indicating a good content

- Price and barcode displayed as small and insignificant

Blogspot.com – magazine conventions:

Empire Magazine:

Online archive:

From 2006 – may 2010

Empire has an online archive of every magazine cover they’ve ever published from 1989 – now – here’s a sample >>>

Analysing empire magazine covers:

- Striking images to capture audience attention

- Image shouldn’t reveal movie plot, in fact it should focus more on the character/actor because that can be more of a selling point

- A colour theme – could link to main image, also to set a tone/mood

- Majority of space given to main feature but use up the rest by advertising extra content to attract others who may not be interested in the main feature

- Barcode, price and date should be small to make them seem insignificant – especially the price

- Magazine title bold and at the top but can be obstructed my the main image

- Different fonts for different features

- Page looks cluttered with text and images

- (you can get special edition covers but they have different conventions which I didn’t want to use on my magazine cover like only having one image and the title – a minimalist idea etc)

Analysing total film magazine covers:

- Only the feature image rather than smaller ones dotted around to help advertise other content, only text is used to do this

- Page cluttered with text around the feature image

- Large title at the top of the page but can be slightly obstructed by the main image

- Barcode and price small and placed in the corner away from the focal point

- Colour themes to set tone/mood – or just to make it look more attractive

My magazine cover:Extra content info

Price and date small

Main image taking up majority of space

Barcode away in the corner

Title big bold and at the top of the

page

Film title in it’s original font and

big to capture attention

Extra content info

Blue colour used to keep

the cooler tones to set the mood –

quite melancholy

Obviously staged image, not still from film, focus on character rather than plot

What’s not so conventional?:

- Similar to the ‘total film’ magazines I didn’t use any other images than the main feature image, this is could possibly be seen as unconventional as most types of magazines use other images to fill up their cover and attract the attention of audiences who maybe would be interested in less significant article rather than the main feature.