The main design features of this magazine:

Masthead – This is the name of the magazine, so this magazines one is ‘rock&metal’.

Cover lines –  these tell us what’s in the magazine, in this magazine they are placed on the right side of it.

Main cover line – This is the main stars name so this one is called ‘Tarja’

Main cover star – The main artist or actor featured on the front cover.

Barcode – A bar-code is always placed on the bottom right to make scanning the magazine easier.

Price – To make sure that the audience/buyer knows how much the magazine costs.

Plug – The main selling points of a magazine, they stand out less than Main cover lines/Cover lines etc, the plug in this magazine is located at the top of it.

Pug –  Otherwise known as ‘The ears of the magazine’, they can either be at the top left or/and right-hand corners of the front cover. The prices of the paper, the logo or a promotion could be included here.

Insets – An extra photo of somebody or somebody else that is featured in the magazine.

Captions – Gives the reader an extra bit of information about the subject.

It’s important to understand the basic rules of a layout for a magazine so that we can create our own with the knowledge of how to catch the readers eye. Not only that but understanding the basic layout of magazines will enable you to understand the conventional design features and how they are more to do with what is conventional to all magazines. This task was to introduce us to the overarching technical conventions of a magazine cover. When I make my magazine I will make sure that I consider the colours, font, language, images etc.

Some of the features I will consider when making my magazine:

Colour – Different meanings and emotions will be portrayed through colour so I will choose carefully which colours I add to my magazine

Font – I will think carefully about my font, the genre of music depends on what font will be used, for example you wouldn’t use a carefully handwritten font that creates a sense of calmness, for rock music that is aggressive and energetic as these are two very contrasting emotions.

Image – I will include images that fit in with the genre of the music on my magazine, so mine would be very dark colours like black and red for hard rock but if I was doing indie the it would be bright saturated images