Analysis of my Wyke Magazine front cover

Firstly having spent some time researching the codes and conventions of magazines i decided to have a line at the top of the magazine. I have chosen to produce this in a white and bold font so that it stands out against the blue background. It straight away tells the readers one of the main things which is going to be included in the magazine. This can also appeal to people and encourage them to read the magazine as they would like to see the guide for the upcoming productions. I had a few different choices of what to name my magazine some of these different ideas which i had were:

1. Actors Circle
2. Action
3. Cut
4. Drama

After looking at these headlines i finally decided to chose the headline of Action as it was short and snappy and i thought it sound appealing. I was close however to chosing 'Actors Circle' for which i would have taken a change of picture, which would have been a group of drama students stood in a circle to resemble the 'Actors Circle' and the close community and group which all drama students are a member of. I decided to place the title of my magazine in a bright orange font against a black background so that it stands out and is eye catching. The bold text almost looks as if it is jumping off the page and will catch readers attention. Underneath my main title of my magazine i have used a smaller font, white and bold to write the sub-title, 'Wyke College Magazine' this is so people know which institution the magazine is centred around and where all of the stories are coming from, i chose the colour white because it stood out against the black background along with the title, however because of the small size it didnt take the attention away from the main title. For my main headline i decided to use a bold and bright yellow text which stands out against some of the dark areas of the main picture. I wanted to do this so that i could run my main headline across the picture without the colours contrasting and the text being difficult to see and read. I have chosen the title 'Wyke Actor dreams of Hollywood Role' as i think it generally sums up the dream of any aspiring actor and thought the story would fit in well with the drama orientated magazine which i was producing. When i took the picture for the front cover i tried to get the person in the photograph to look as though they were not paying attention and tried to get them to look as if they were thinking of something else as if they were in their own little 'dream world' thinking about their hollywood aspirations. I was going to take a photo of the people doing some acting, however decided against this as sometimes it is hard to show when people are acting.

Underneath the main picture and headline i decided to add another small caption running along the bottom with some text telling the readers about one of the main stories coming up in this issue. 'Exclusive chat with media teacher'. I thought this would help to encourage both males and females to read the magazine as it has a chat section which appeals to female magazines like 'Love it' etc whilst some of the articles appeal to the males. I also chose to put this text on the front as it says 'exclusive chat'. This gives the article a more important and excited feeling as it is an exclusive interview and would encourage readers to turn straight to them pages and may influence them on their decision to buy the magazine.

I have included the page numbers to the stories underneath the bold headlines to show what page the readers can turn to, to go directly to the story that interests or excites them most. I have chosen to colour these in bright blue as i didnt want to do it in the same colour as the headlines or they could both clash and the oage numbers wouldnt stand out as much or be as clear and so i decided to do them in a bright blue so that they were seperate from the headlines and stood out against the photograph.

I have finally added a barcode, date, issue number and price as these are natural codes and conventions that are on any magazine. After researching magazine front covers i discovered that these are usually placed in the bottom right hand corner and are usually quite small compared to the rest of the magazine, i have done mine in this style to stick to the codes and conventions of magazine design.