Research into Existing Magazines

I have researched a range of magazine covers.I have identified numerous techniques that have been used and are popular throughout magazine covers. The magazine layouts appear to be quite similar in the way that they present their images and information on the cover. Such layouts consist of techniques such a mast head, strap lines, a tag line, images on a left side third, puffs, most importantly a central image and other extras such as barcode and price.

Film Magazine: Twilight

I have researched into the magazine cover Film In of the film 'new moon' this is a popular film that is mainly aimed towards girls because it is a love story. This cover will target a range of audience particualarly teenagers and fans of the film and novel. Socialisation is important for this novel because everyone will be talking about the novel as it is popular so people will want to read it so they can be involved.Young people look up to these characters played, they are well known characters and people think these characters are good looking and dress well. So they are good models towards them.

The banner line shows that the font of the writing on this film cover is suited to the genre, the writing is bright and white almost trying to represent a moon. There is a strap line on the magazine front cover 'exclusive sneak peek!' making the readers want to read more inside the magazine, this strap line encourages the readers to buy the magazine as they want to know more.

The dinations of the front cover show the three main characters in the film, as shown in the writing underneath the banner line giving the film characters names of 'Kristen Stewart, Taylor Lautner and Robert Pattinson' infront of a Twilight background. The connotation of the framed positon of the characters shows her hand on his shoulder, represented that she is in love with him and it also shows him looking over his should to show he in in love with her. There is a love triangle shown between the three antagonist. On the left hand third usually promoting other articles in the magazine.


Film Magazine: The Dark Knight

This Empire magazine cover has extremely catchy bright colours. So at a first glance of looking at this magazine on a shelf it would stand out and catch the eyes of the persons attention.

The character featured on the front of the magazine is the 'Joker' from 'The Dark Knight', the joker has very dull colours on but the surroundings fonts and colours make him stand out the most. This is in complete contrast to the film poster for 'The Dark Knight'. Also as the 'Joker' is played by the huge actor Heath Ledger, the magazine has a huge selling point. Also when filming 'the Dark Knight', Heath passed away so this may also sell the magazine.

The cover of the magazine seems to be comical with a sense of horror, if the 'Joker' wasn't smiling then the sense of horror would disappear. There is also a lot of text on the front of the magazine, telling us what articles are inside. 'World Exclusive'. These words attract attention when looking at this magazine because it keeps the audience thinking as to what this world exclusive may actually be. The words 'Joker' are shown to be in illuminous green, the colour of which the 'Joker' wears throughout the film.