Inspirational Magazine Covers

Our task is to create a promotional package for a new film. This includes a trailer, poster and magazine cover for the film. We collected various magazine covers to analyse and pick out elements we particularly liked and annotated it. 'Empire' is one of the most popular and well known film magazines in the UK, which is why we took samples from this magazine but different issues. 

The price of this magazine is written in English and American currency, suggesting the magazine attracts an audience world wide. Therefore the target audience is the magazine is mass rather than niche. The main headline 'Cowboys & Aliens' has a blue glow to it, linking to the use of aliens in the title and suggests the film is science fiction, identifying its target audience of this particular film immediately. The main image of the cover is of a cowboy, also indicating the film has a western element to it, which identifies another side it the films target audience. 

The badge of the bottom left of the page uses direct mode of address, speaking to the reader of the magazine directly saying 'YOU!' 

The magazine also appears to use the power of persuasion, by including a tagline stating 'MAGAZINE OF THE YEAR' which may easily convince a new reader to buy the magazine.

On this magazine, it uses textual methods to lure the reader into buying. If the potential audience is a fan of the actor Tom Cruise, the magazine has added a badge stating 'CRUISE EXCLUSIVE!', the capitals make it seems as though the magazine has got this just for you. Another badge, mentions a 'FREE!' audio book for every reader, it convinces the reader that because they are getting more than they are paying for they have to buy it. Also, a minor tagline mentions it is the Lord of the Rings '10th BIRTHDAY'. Then elements at the bottom of the page state the party is amazing. Therefore, the reader cannot miss the 'party' and again are convinced to purchase the product.

The name of the magazine is almost always the largest sized font of the page, closely followed by the name of the film being featured and promoted on the cover. We plan to follow this trend, as we feel it sets the standard of the film. We are also applying the feature of the image being almost the whole  size of the page, as by dedicating the whole of the front page to one film image it sends the message to the audience that it is a worthy film to watch. Along with this, we will include a main sell line and a sub headline to explain what the audience can expect of our film. The colours we use in relation to promoting our product will be dark colours, thus they should connote to the audience our genre without  us having to blatantly explain it to them. However we will include some red, as this is often associated with some sort of danger to a character but it can also be  eye catching to the audience amongst all the darker colours will stand out bright. The colours will become a scheme we use for the image and titles on the magazine cover specifically for the main trailer we are promoting, our poster will also follow this colour scheme in some way. It would be worrying, if with all these elements composed on one page the audience did not grasp what genre our product is. 

Empire is a very successful film magazine, thus we will promote other films and their events on our front cover like Empire does with some more minor sell lines. We plan to use some persuasive devices such as direct mode of address, speaking directly to the reader though uses such as 'you'. Also, we want to turn our magazine into a product the reader can't refuse through elements on the cover. We want to make them feel that what they are buying is a 100% exclusive created just for them. It needs to appear to be a bargain to them, so we may advertise a free item to them on our front cover.