magazine front covers presentation

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Magazine Front Covers Presentation By Lewis Howard

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My presentation about Magazine front covers and their conventions

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Page 1: Magazine front covers presentation

Magazine Front Covers PresentationBy Lewis Howard

Page 2: Magazine front covers presentation

When creating a magazine the front covers is arguably the most important part of the magazine since it will be the page that captures the viewers attention and makes them want to read the entire magazine as well as giving them a general idea of what they can expect from the magazine. This can be achieved in various different ways such as: making it easy to identify what the type of magazine is (e.g. A sport’s magazine would have a famous sports person, or a magazine about computing would have some type of electronics device), the images used and colours, what is going to be featured within the magazine etc.

Page 3: Magazine front covers presentation

The majority of magazine front covers have layouts that consist of a single image of someone (usually someone famous) or something in front of ether a blank or photo shopped background (the two images would have been shot separately and then cropped together) with the magazine heading at the top of the page in a extremely large font. This is then followed by various sub-headings about certain sections within the magazine (often the best ones) that would attract audiences the most, along with coloured text that will contrast with the background colour of the magazine in order to stand out (e.g. White background magazines have text that is ether red of black).

Magazine headingRed and black textPhoto-shopped backgroundWhite

backgroundSub-headings

Single image of person

Page 4: Magazine front covers presentation

Back in the late 1920’s when magazine first started the front covers started out as simple painted images with little more than a title and a subheading to accompany the image. This was mainly due to the fact that technology was very limited at the time and even photography was something that could be done in five minutes (the same situation occurred with film posters). Because of this there weren’t many magazine during that time and because of this they could only cover certain topics.

Page 5: Magazine front covers presentation

Modern day magazine front covers are much more detailed in comparison because not only do they feature a lot more text and information (as well as a variety of text fonts and colours), but they also now have high quality images of people and objects thanks to digital cameras and because of software programs like Photoshop people can be airbrushed in order to make them look better and they can also be cropped into different backgrounds. Plus it is now possible to create computer generated images for both background and characters.

Also now there are magazine for just about every type of media topic such as: films, video games, fashion, cooking, cars, and even general gossip.

Page 6: Magazine front covers presentation

Now it’s time to narrow things down a bit since the type of magazine front cover my group and I will be creating will be for a horror film, so let’s take a look at film magazine front covers.

Now the two biggest film magazine are ‘total film’ and ‘Empire’ and their front covers often consist of a single image of the main character in the film they will be featuring as their main article (often a big summer block buster) along with some sort of background the corresponds with the film or characters as well as the typical magazine conventions like the large heading and various subheadings.

Page 7: Magazine front covers presentation

While both ‘total film’ and ‘Empire’ are the two biggest film magazine companies ever, they tend to cover general film viewing rather than focusing their magazines on a specific genre of film, and my groups front cover is meant for a magazine the focuses on horror films. Now let’s look at two magazine that focus on a particular film genres.

Page 8: Magazine front covers presentation

The first genre is Sci-fi and the magazine is ‘Sci-fi Now’. This magazine is about science-fiction in both film and television and this is shown through the images used in the front cover. While admittedly the front cover doesn't look that much different from the covers used in ‘total film’ and ‘Empire’ I believe the use of colour and images help to make it stand out (e.g. the glowing blue colour is used often in the magazine as well as sci-fi films, plus the people/characters featured relate heavily to science-fiction). Also the magazine does a good job incorporating the imagery into the text.

Incorporating imagery into the text.

The Decepticon logo being used as the dot in ‘I’

The planet Saturn being used as the dot in ‘I’

The image of ‘TRON’ reaching for the button in order to put emphasis on some sort of prize or competition

Page 9: Magazine front covers presentation

The second genre is Horror and the magazine is ‘HorrorHound’. Now right from the get go you can see that the front cover looks different compared most magazine front covers in terms of both structure and style. For instance instead of the main image being a photograph it is instead a painted image that has a comic book/graphic novel feel to it (granted it’s still uses just one person on the cover with a background). I must admit I really like the graphic novel style front covers (though I doubt my group and I could replicate something like this) I believe there is a reason why HorrorHound use this type of front cover and it’s because there is a lot more you can do with painted images compared to a photograph in terms of movement and colour and it works in this case due to graphic nature of the Horror genre. Also unlike most magazine

that have sub headings and buttons in any random section of the page (often it depends on the image) ‘HorrorHound’ always have a left hand column that features 3 sub-headings as well as images to go with them, which is again a technique often used in comic book front covers

Connection?

Page 10: Magazine front covers presentation

In conclusion I would like to try and create a magazine front cover that follows the style of that used in ‘HorrorHound’ but I would also like to have the layout of typical magazine front cover like ‘SciFiNow’. Now I said I would ‘like’ to have something like this because I doubt myself or the members of my group could paint an image to make it look like something of professional graphic novel quality, plus the painted image a long with a traditional layout may not work since it might be difficult to find a text colour that can stand out from all the colours used in the painting with out it looking out of place (e.g. Purple text in a horror magazine) and having too much text on the front cover might make the whole thing seem really cramped and messy.

So in the end, I believe that my group and I will create something similar to that of most magazine front covers, but it would be nice to try and make my idea work since I think the end result would be great.

Page 11: Magazine front covers presentation

Thanks for watching