Magazine Front Cover Conventions

They are many magazine front cover conventions, which are all very important in selling the magazine.

Masthead title piece: This is basically the magazines name/title. This is usually placed at the top left corner of the magazine so when the magazine is on the shelf, in a shop buyers can easily see the title and straight away identity it.

Price: This is the price the magazine is going to be sold for. This is usually in small font placed on the magazine however sometimes can be a big feature of the magazine if its on offer.

Date: The date of the magazine is important specially for collectors magazines. Magazines can range from weekly: Saturday to Friday OR Monthly: a month ahead.

Issue Number: The issue number is also important for collectors magazines especially, the issue number is just the tally of the magazines.

Barcode: The barcode is read electronically and decoded into a usable information, this process is done when the magazine is bought.

Teaser: This is a one word or phase that grabs the readers attention and to also sell the magazine.

Main Feature: Headline: This is a phase that many summarise the main point of the main feature. In large print, different style, bold colours in order to catch the attention of the reader.

Subtitle: This is a small headline that may summarise the feature.

Small Feature: This is basically the features that are included in the advert.

Images: Size: CU to med CU. They can rannge from one main image to x amount featuring one main image and smaller images. Helps make the page look more interesting. It can also aadd understanding of a story and/or entice someone to read the magazine.

Font: The style and size of the type face.

Colour: Specific/stylistic/thematic types.

Graphics: Graphical shapes to highlight feature(s).

Offers/adverts Blurb: This is a banner-style shape featuring free products/promotions.

Other Conventions:

Left Third: This is everything included on the left side of the magazine, this has the same idea as the Masthead title piece in which when people are buying the magazine they can see whats included as the magazines are overlapped.

Cover Lines: The cover lines tell you exactly whats included in the magazine such as storys and interviews.

Sell Lines: These are clever lines to sell the magazine.

Anchorage: This is when the main cover line supports the image.

Teller: A teller is a line that tells you what the Headline is about.

Flash: Everything that is on the front of the magazine.

Graphology: This is the study and analysis of handwriting.

Colour Scheme: This is the colour scheme of the magazine which usually all matches or fits together in a special way. The colour scheme tells us alot about the magazine.

Kicker: Often seen in newsletters and magazines, the kicker is a short phrase found set above the headline. Usually set in a smaller type than the headline, the kicker can serve as an introduction or as a type of section heading to identify a regular column, for instance.

The Brief AS Media

Preliminary exercise: Using DTP and an image manipulation program, produce the front page of a new school/college magazine, featuring a photograph of a student in medium close-up plus some appropriately laid-out text and a masthead. Additiomally you must produce a mock-up of the layout of the contents page to demonstrate their grasp of DTP.

Main task: the front page, contents and a double page spread of a new music magazine. All images and text must be original, produced by you - minimum of four images.