CONVENTIONS OF A MUSIC MAGAZINE COVER

COVER IMAGE.

• Every magazine cover with holds an image that normally relates to the main article and selling point of the magazine.

• Within a music magazine cover the image normally consists of an artist or somebody who is relevant within the music world.

• The image used within the magazine cover shown for ’Rolling Stones’ the artist is looking straight at the audience into the camera to which gives a direct address.

• This allows attention to be brought towards the cover opposed to an image of a further away artist or somebody who is not looking directly at the camera

MASTHEAD

• The masthead will normally cover the complete top of the magazine cover however if the name is short it will sit in the top left corner.

• Ideally it is in a big bold font to attract the audience, for example within the example on this slide the cover image used is in black and white whereas the title is in a bold, unique and colored font making it stand out.

• The main image can sometimes cover the title if it is well known, for example a magazine such as ‘Rolling Stone’ is a very well known magazine, allowing people to recognize it by a few letters and purely the font.

COLOUR SCHEME.

• Magazine covers tend to remain simple with the colour scheme, consisting of only 3-4 colours enabling them to contrast well. • Some covers tend to be all black and

white to represent different styles• The colours that I have found that are

common in popular music magazines are mainly primary colours, showing to be bright and bold.

TEXT.

• Brief snippets of texts and images are commonly used to the left and right of the magazine cover to link to stories that are involved inside the magazine.• These tend to be in bold, large texts if

they are seen as important, however some are smaller and represent filler stories that are within the magazine.• Texts that are commonly used within

popular music magazine covers are Sans Serif, Times New Roman & Ariel.

TEXT - COVERLINES

• As I have previously mentioned the types of cover lines that are used tend to be out of the ordinary and ambiguous, this is an attempt to draw in the target audience.• They also tend to be written in bold, simple fonts to

which are all in capitals.• Commonly 5-6 coverlines are used as the magazine

should not be too crowded in that the audience cannot read them easily, this allows them to frame the main image rather than cover the entirety of the magazine cover.• Sublines are also used to write extra information on

the cover lines to give a further insight to the story, however without giving away a lot of important information to the story.