Common features of Magazine Front Covers

Evident from all 3 covers, a bold masthead is used to inform the audience of brand identity. Well known brands let their masthead fall behind the image, suggesting the audience already knows of the brand, so more space can be used for the feature film. Usually white, if the background is grey or black and usually a gothic font, the masthead indicates the main content of the magazine. ‘Scream’ implies the focus on ‘slasher’ horror with exaggerated blood and gore shown by the blood drips on the front cover, whereas using ‘Horror’ as the title is quite ambiguous suggesting the magazine covers all sub-genres of horror. Clear interpellation on a front cover is a good technique as it allows the audience to choose a magazine based on the content that they specifically want, making the design of the front cover very important for sales. 

Colours are often used to reflect the mood of the genre. Stereotypical colours used are black, red and white. Black presents the theme of darkness, where horror films are commonly filmed, White is used for the writing, in clear contrast to the black background and Red is the colour of blood, making the cover more scary and appealing to a ‘slasher’ audience.

Most covers use a central image, focusing on the main character from the film. A range of shot types are used for this image. For bigger budget magazines such as ‘Total Film’, a Medium Long Shot (MLS) is used to dominate the cover, whereas smaller budget magazines such as ‘Scream’ have a Medium Close Up (MCU) with smaller images surrounding. The MCU shows a more gruesome image portraying horror, whereas the MLS relies on the film reputation to portray the genre of film.

As for subsidiary magazine features, puffs are very uncommon on movie magazine front covers, so are tag lines that encourage further reading. Most film magazine audiences are encouraged to buy the magazine depending on the film featured on the front cover. Nevertheless, ‘Horror” uses a puff along the whole top line for sales purposes, as it gives the audience a prompt to buy it.

Smaller film magazines also fill the cover with cover stories. As they can't afford to promote horror blockbusters, they surround the central film image with sub cover stories so that the magazine appeals to a multi film audience; again maximising sales. 

From these techniques identified, we plan to conform with the dark colour scheme with a large, white masthead on the top third of the page. Given that we are planning to re-create a 'psychological slasher' dripping blood effects might add interest to our print based project however it may look less sophisticated to our target audience of older males. We will use a basic font for text and a contrasting colour to highlight the story content. As for the main cover story image, we think a MLS looks better as our central image won't rely on the characters 'horror make-up' to effect the reader. A MLS also portrays the sense of isolation, which adds to the psychological side of the trailer. Conforming to general layout, we will probably use a few sub cover stories to make the cover look more diverse, however we don't want to use puffs or pugs as the best designs have simpler layouts.