Magazine Guidance - Front Cover

Magazine Guidance

Front Cover

Photos

It is critical that your photo shoot is well planned. Without good photos it is impossible to create a high quality magazine, as a result of this it is best to take as many photos as possible during your shoot. It is also a good timesaving exercise to take photos for your Double Page Spread during the same shoot, so your models should also have a variety of costumes available.

Recommendations

—  Variety is key. Use a variety of camera angles including long shot, mid shot, close up, high angle, eye level and low angle. For the Front Cover a close up to mid shot should be used and within the Double Page Spread a variety of angles.

—  Eye contact is preferable for your front cover image. This is effective at drawing the attention of your target audience.

—  Actor/s will ideally be ‘in character’ in your Front Cover main image. The general convention for both film and television magazines (especially in the case of the former) is to have your models portrayed as the character they play in the feature.

—  However, do not use a still from the film/series on your front cover. Again the general convention is to use a promotional photo where the actor has taken part in a photo shoot in order to promote the production. It is also advisable to cut out your Front Cover image as a complex background around your image can result in a greater challenge when designing your sell lines. Stills from the production or behind the scenes shots will sometimes be found in the Double Page Spread if appropriate however this will be explained in more detail in the Double Page Spread guidance.

—  It is easiest to create a convincing Front Cover when only one image is used. Sub images can be used, generally these work best when displayed along the bottom of the page and are framed to give a sense of separation from the main image.

Masthead

The Masthead allows for quite a bit of freedom in design so this section will be relatively brief. The key aim of a Masthead is to establish brand identity, the best ways to do this are to use a short, memorable name (‘Empire’, ‘Total Film’, ‘NME’ or at the furthest extreme ‘Q’ are all prime examples) and it should relate to the genre of your production.

                Recommendations

—  Ensure your masthead follows the colour scheme.

—  Choose an easy to read, eye catching font. It is advisable to avoid taking screenshots from Dafont as using a font that is built into Photoshop will provide more freedom when applying effects to the text. Also due to the nature of a screenshot from a website, it may appear pixellated, taking away from the professional feel of your production.

Sell Lines/Flashes

These are often overlooked when considering magazine design; however they are certainly one of the hardest parts to recreate convincingly. Your sell lines will comprise of one ‘main feature’, it should tie in with your main image and allows for the most freedom in design, in some cases it will be nearly as eye catching as the Masthead. You will then need to create several smaller sell lines, the focus of these is to promote additional key contents of the magazine, whilst avoiding detracting from the main feature.

Recommendations

—  Ensure that key words stand out. Names, numbers and striking words are generally the ones to target. They should be made to stand out through either font size, colour or where appropriate the use of a unique font (this will generally be the case when the subject uses an iconic font in their name/title, however this should only occur once or twice on your Front Cover, if at all).

—  Don’t go overkill on colour scheme. Generally magazines will use one feature colour and black, grey or white. Sometimes they will also opt for a second colour; however this will generally be muted in comparison to the feature colour.

—  Keep them brief. A good sell line will typically only comprise of 3 to 6 bold words and sometimes will have a small summation of the feature using a much smaller font and less eye catching colour underneath.

—  Keep them readable. You will need to choose colours that stand apart from the background and a font that’s simple and easy to read whilst also being eye catching (Impact is a good example of a font that boasts these features and as a result is very commonly used in magazines, film posters, clothing and many more mediums).

—  Don’t use Dafont screenshots! When using a font that is installed into Photoshop you gain access to arguably the most useful tool for sell line design; the Character tool. Using this you have a huge amount of freedom when manipulating text and will be able to fine tune it to the degree that distinguishes an outstanding magazine from a good one.

Other Information

Whilst the sections preceding this will be more time consuming and challenging to produce, it is important to remember that there are several pieces of additional information that you will need to include on your magazine cover. Generally these will be discreet in comparison to other text; however they are just as essential in order to create a professional looking product.

—  Barcode

—  Price (often magazines will include the price in Pounds, Dollars and Euros)

—  Website

—  Issue date (usually this will be just a month and year, eg. January 2013)

—  Issue number

—  Optional – Freebies/suppliments/competition