During my magazine analysis I came across a few common conventions between all the magazine covers. One of which is the rule of three, most of the magazine covers stick to the rule of three in terms of colour. This is essential as adding too many colours to the magazine cover may make it look unattractive and non-professional. Using three colours helps the target audience navigate through the front page easily and allows them to understand what is there on the magazine. Another thing that I noticed about the colours is that most of the magazine covers use black, yellow and red as there three colours. However, this may vary for different genres of the magazine. Most of the horror magazine covers stick to these three colours as to represent the horror genre. The colour red connotes danger and death, black connotes darkness and evil and the colour white is readable and conventional throughout different types of magazine. As it is one of the conventions followed by most of the magazine I will try to implement to my own magazine cover as well.
One of the most common convention was that all the magazines had a bar-code placed in he bottom right corner of the magazine. The reason for the position of the bar-code is to make it easier for the audience to make the purchase. Keeping this in mind, I will also add a bar-code in my own magazine cover. Another thing that I noticed amongst the magazine covers is the position of the masthead, which for most of the magazine is on the top of the magazine in bold and on top the central image. This is to make it visible and stand out the audience. I will further implement this to my magazine cover as well. The position of the masthead on the top is extremely important as it makes the magazine identifiable. Also, magazine covers mostly have a central image which is mostly a close-up shot and the character is making an eye contact with camera. This is essential as it helps the audience connect with the magazine. This is a convention followed by most of the magazines therefore, I will also contrive this in my magazine.
As part of my magazine research I also found that different magazine covers have different target audience they create the magazine for. For instance, I analysed horror magazine covers whose target audience would be people who are fans of horror genre. Also, as most of the magazine covers that i analysed were not just featuring horror movies, they had a wider range of genres implemented in to one magazine. Magazines implement different aspects to attract their target audience. The magazine covers I analysed would target the audience that are interested in films and are fans of cinema. The people who would be attracted by films especially horror. One of the magazine covers had feature picture of Harry Potter, this is effective as the character has an established target audience which would then want to read further about his films or the films that are similar giving the magazine more audience. Also, the cover lines of most of the magazines have the names of the famous directors and the characters that are in the films. This allowed me to see how magazines use different techniques to drive their target audience to the magazine. Therefore, I would use similar techniques to attract my target audience for my magazine.
The house style of the magazines was maintained in different editions of the magazines. For instance, I had analysed two different companies: EMPIRE and SCREAM. I noticed that the house style for EMPIRE was the position of the masthead i.e. on top of the central image and in bold simple text. Secondly, the position of the bar-code was at the bottom right hand side which makes it easy for the audience to make the purchase. Another thing that was common in the edition was the slogans which were very film oriented such as "featuring best film reviews". These kind of slogans are to attract the audiences attention and make them to buy the magazine. On the other hand, SCREAM mainly is targeted at people who are horror fans as it features on of the well known horror films and interviews of the directors. The house style was again the position of the masthead which was on the top of the magazine. However, the font type used was more bloody and the magazine had many cover lines covering the whole front cover. This was very different to what other magazines do as there is not many cover lines around the magazine.
The common thing amongst the two different magazines was the central image which for both the magazines was either a close up shot or a medium shot of the character either studio shot or still shots taken from the film itself. I shall also try to use a close up shot of the protagonist from my groups teaser trailer as it directly addresses the audience and creates a sense of fear in them. I may use a still shot from the teaser trailer itself to make it easier for my target audience to relate between the two. I will have to make sure that the image looks scary and connotes the genre of our film.
The layouts between the same magazines differed in the shape as most of EMPIRE magazines follow the C structure whereas the SCREAM magazine follows the U structure. However, in both cases the text is usually around the central image so that the attention is not taken away from the central image and keep it easy for the audience to understand the cover lines and what they can expect from within the magazine. I will try to implement the C structure for magazine as it allows me to provide my target audience with a lot of information and it does not cluster around the image making it complicated for the audience to read the magazine. Lastly, the price of the magazine for the covers that I analysed was either in the middle on top of the letters or on the side. For my magazine I would consider placing the price and edition number of the magazine on top of one of my letters in very small text to make sure it does not take away the attention from the main image and the masthead. The reason behind using small font is so that the audience does not get distracted by the price of the magazine and don't look at it as the first thing on the magazine.
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