In order to create a music magazine that suits my genre and stands out to me, I looked for inspiration and made a slide of the magazines that I found the most captivating. These covers stood out to me in particular, because I found the graphics appealed to me, especially the ones where photo manipulation was demonstrated to make the cover feel like it’s something it’s not. These front covers also appealed to me due to their unique colour palette of pastels, which is the colour scheme of my own genre- indie pop.

When creating any type of magazine cover it is important to use design conventions that will attract your target audience. One way media producers try to attract a larger audience is by including famous celebrities or influencers that may inspire new readers to buy it and eventually become a long term subscriber. For example, this can be seen through the ‘Cosmopolitan’ front cover I included on my slide, where the producers have used a famous YouTuber Emma Chamberlain as their cover model to appeal to a younger audience. One graphic design convention I like in particular is the ‘billboard; cover, where the masthead is written downwards. This stands out to me because it doesn’t look like the other magazines where the masthead is typically written across the top, it adds character and I feel as though if I was to use this technique on my own front cover it would appeal to my target audience. Another front cover which has me captivated is the ‘Bazar’ one, where the front cover model is surrendered by pink feathers. This draws attention to her face and in particular her glamorous makeup. This technique would be perfect if I was looking to advertise a certain makeup product.

Focusing forward, this task has taught me the significance of using certain fonts, coverlines, layout, cover model and colour palette. I now am aware of photo manipulation which I am going to being using in my own front cover because the combining of the elements is unique and will convince viewers.