Front Cover Evaluation #1

To prepare to research and draft my music magazine front cover I have thoroughly examined three different Magazine covers to make an understanding as to what makes a good music magazine front cover.

My first cover is from Q June 2014.

This was a good front cover because the masthead is big enough to see but not covering anything it shouldn't do (Eg. The main image). The most outstanding part of the cover to me is the image because it is very dramatic giving me the idea that the image can be very action packed, while the magazine can be successful.

The colour of the masthead also sticks to the house style as Q's house style of red colour. This is good as the house style s basically the brand identity of the magazine if the magazine goes off these colours, then it is possible that the brand identity cold be lost.

On this cover, there are 4 cover stories. This is a good number as it tells us a good amount of what has been put into the magazine and the stories it covers.

The difference between my college magazine cover and this cover is that this cover has the cover stories spread out around the outside. I can use this to my advantage by putting less text for each cover story and by also spreading out across all the edges.

This cover also appeals to the target audience because it is very modern and new. The cover appeals to both sexes because Lily Allen appeals to younger women due to being their idol and also being a significant role model to teenage girls. Young men are appealed to because they can use the male-gaze and also a lot of the cover stories appeal to men including, Ricky Gervais and Nutini. For the older audience, Oasis is also included on the banner at the top of the page with a front cover story.

This image has been altered in multiple ways to enhance it to a higher quality. One way this has been done is the microphone has been edited to give the image that the middle has been completely smashed into many pieces. This is done to give the microphone a more dynamic look to it. The colour has also been enhanced to the next that the shine was distorted. The background has been chosen to not be cluttered so that all the attention was focused onto Lily Allen.

From this magazine I would take the idea of using the masthead in the top left corner. This is because it doesn't take up any important space, while also being big enough to notice straight away. I would also use the idea of putting the cover stories around the outside because it is very tidy and they all fit very well.