Magazine Choices

Font

We chose a font for the main text based on simple fonts used by similar existing products. The font we used was ultimately chosen by target audience members in our primary research. They said it represented the horror genre well, and when put on a black background the serif would really stand out.

We decided to focus more on the fonts which advertise the 'Ouija' and 'Crimson Peak' cover stories, as this was a prevalent feature used by Empire and Fangoria magazines; within the horror genre. We figured that with the front page being the first interaction with the reader, it is important to immerse the audience into the featured films to ensure we grab their attention immediately, and express the main films featured in this week's edition; which we found to be important for a reader when choosing which magazine to buy. By using the font used in the film, it is easy for them to identify the films featured in this edition.

Colours

Although our questionnaire suggested that we should use a black, red and amber colour scheme to attract our target audience, during production it was difficult to choose the right shade of amber, so that it didnt look too white and it didnt look to orange which isn't a stereotypical colour used by magazines such as Scream and Fangoria. We still abided by an amber colour for certain texts, and the Ouija title is a shade of amber however to make the text look bold on the black background, it looked better to just use a white colour for the text.

We decided to use white for the masthead, as this is the boldest colour in contrast to the black background. Alongside other magazines on a shelf, this colour will stand out the most.

We chose to use a red for our main cover story title, as we thought this would make the name of the film stand out and after all the feature film is our trailer, which highlights the prevalence of this film in this week's edition.

Image

Based on our research, horror magazine covers usually feature a head and shoulders shot, or mid shot of the film's antagonist. For our print based work we used an image of our trailer's antagonist, on a black background. Although magazines such as Scream use vivid colours to grab the attention of their audience, we added a black and white effect onto the photo as we felt the bleak colours on our photo couldn't be enhanced to make the photo look better, therefore we took a different approach by adding a black and white effect.

Our research into magazine covers showed us that front cover images usually have no surrounding mise en scene; just the individual's mid shot. Our original photo featured the antagonist in a wood, with trees and branches surrounding her, however we used photoshop and iPhoto to edit the image, so that it could be transferred onto a black background with nothing around her.
 

Masthead

 
We used a masthead from dafont.com as it had better fonts for us to use, which would conform to our horror genre better than a WordArt font. The font that we used wasn't similar to pre-existing horror magazines as we felt it was important to have a unique brand which separated us from Scream and Fangoria. Although the font was unique, we followed the same conventions by using a third of the page of the masthead. We also found that unlike music magazines, the masthead it usually a normal word which spans the whole page rather than just one letter.

Ultimately, our masthead was chosen by the results from our questionnaire. From the three choices, 'UNCUT' was chosen to represent our genre the best, and was most appealing to members of our target audience.

Sub Cover Stories

Our cover stories are based on recent films, as we identified from our research it is the films featured in the film which grab the reader's attention. We chose these films as they conformed to our psychological horror genre and we used the title of the film as the title of the sub cover story, so that it clearly communicated to the audience which films were included in this edition.

 
We also added a well known actor's name, who features in a 2015 horror film, as we knew it would not only gain fans of the actor, but gain fans of the overall film, meaning we could reach a large audience.

The use of '100 Horrors YOU can't miss' also allows us to communicate with the reader, via a feature that will gain a variety of readers. We chose to address the audience as 'YOU' because we know from research that the main purpose of a magazine is to entertain an individual, so by addressing them individually, and saying the you can't miss this, it forces them into thinking they have to buy the magazine.
 
We added a pug to draw in a certain type of audience; even though we aimed to make our magazine cover appeal to a variety of readers, we know that an audience is divided into many sub audiences. This technique appeals to those who like to gain something from buying the magazine, as it gives them the choice to win tickets to a film within our genre.