RESEARCH: Magazines

Before I began creating my magazine it was important to do research into published magazine covers. This allowed me to understand the codes and conventions of magazine covers.

Empire Magazine is currently the market leader of film magazines. Therefore I thought that I could use some of their previous covers as a guideline for my own.

I thought this was a highly effective front cover. When I first looked at it, I noticed that the first thing i was drawn to was the gun before the headline 'Public Enemies'. I would've thought that the the masthead would be what I was originally drawn to. However in this case, due to Empire being such a massive magazine they are able to rely on the headline drawing in new customers rather than the name of the magazine as people are already familiar with the name of the magazine.

I also noticed that Johnny Depp's head was covering most of the M and P in Empire. This again is due to Empire having such confidence in the public knowing their name. This of course is only possible in a magazine that is very well known. Therefore it is not a good idea to do it to the same extent in my own magazine.

There is very little white space on the cover, as most of it is covered by headlines and pictures. There is the main headline 'Public Enemies' which is just below the centre of the page, but there is also a second smaller headline 'Heroes of 2010' which runs down the right hand side of the layout.