Magazine Front Cover

This was was my starting point for my front cover. I chose this picture of the band as their bright colors would be attractive on the front cover of a magazine. Also the position of the band members gives a 3D look to the cover, which makes them stand out and be noticed. I tried this picture behind and in-front of the title and i decided on the picture being in-front, as again it adds to the 3D, layering effect and also shows how the band is the main part of the cover, not the magazine name.

To develop my cover from my starting point i decided to make the picture look bolder by underlining the title and effectively making a boarder around the picture. This also would help me to separate my text i will include on my cover.

I then decided to play around with different effects i could use on the cover. I liked this effect as the faded colored light looks like spotlights and the colors add to the bright, pop and young look i wanted to create for my magazine.

Looking back on my research i was able to get a more realistic idea of colors and effects i should use to help target my audience and reach the standard of the market. I found that most music magazine use 3 colors, so decided to stick to red, white and black. I then changed the bold lines i had created to red and instead of using a white background behind my headline i used black, so the contrasting red text would stand out and be more eye catching. By this stag i needed to decided on my headline. So i tried out both 'I-Pop' and 'NÜ' as my masterhead and after looking at both i found that I-Pop was not punchy enought, it needed to be be more unqiue and and memorable. A shorter abbreviation of a word i believe would suit my target audience better. Also layout wise, a smaller masterhead was able to fit better in the space and therefore was not getting lost behind the main picture. I then started developing ideas of text to use on my front cover. I wanted snappy lines so i used persuasive language to engage the reader. Colloquial language is a convention of music magazines and is important for appealing to a wider audience. The music magazine i am creating, is a consumer magazine, so they aim for leisure reading and enjoyment. I want to portray this through my magazines front cover by including this informal language and using punctuation marks for exaggeration. 

This is my FINAL Music Magazine Front Cover!

You can see my development and reasons of how i reached this final point of my music magazine cover. The text i included is engaging. The bigger text at the top of the page is in a bolder font and shows the reader its greater importance and how it links with the main picture. The connotation you can make about their blind fold image makes the reader feel like they will be gaining an insight into the bands world 'REVEALING ALL'. Having the text all in upper case letters exaggerates the 'EXCLUSIVE' interview and makes the front cover seem more exciting. Also the change in color on 'ALL' is code for the readers understanding that the interview will give away lots of information. I also change the color of other words on my front cover to again highlight the more important parts of the text. I use a read-through on the cover of my magazine which gives an insight into what the bands article will be about; this is a convention of a magazine. The quotation i've used is shocking and it engages the reader to want to buy the magazine to read this article. I use persuasive language, when including how you can win festival tickets. Teenagers will want to be 'in the know' and therefor will be attracted to this competition of winning free festival tickets. Conventions of a music magazine i have included in this front cover is, the barcode. This is typical of any magazine and this means the magazine is buyable in shops. Also the date and issue of the magazine is a convention of this type of magazine as they keep up to date with their publishing. The price is also viewable on my cover but the cost of music magazines varies. I included a website of the magazine company and this is a good media way to gain interest as if they do not buy the magazine they might go onto the website. All these conventions of a music magazine i have used in the colour and this shows how they link together and share the same importance. The font that i use on the cover gives a modern and finished feel. I keep the same font in the text and just change the size and weight. I use a different font for the masterhead and the text over the band image. These two seperate fonts i downloaded from a website and  believe they work really well with the style i want to overl create.