Magazine Cover: Realistic Aspects

When creating our magazine cover, we wanted to make sure that it looked as realistic as possible so it looked as best as it possibly could and make it seem like an actual real film was being advertised on the front cover. Below are some aspects we included in our magazine cover to make it look more realistic and the ideas we got them from.

Here (far left) we have the world 'Exclusive' taken from an example of a Total Film magazine cover. We copied this onto our blog (far right) because we felt it was just something that typically appeared on magazine covers because they contain lots of exclusive content e.g. interviews, facts, articles, posters etc. 

Here (far left) we see an advertisement on a cover of a Total Film magazine advertising the 'Lesbian Vampire Killers' killers. To make our magazine cover seem more realistic, we too included an advertisement (far right) of a new film that has been released 'The Devils Due' which we saw the trailer of recently on twitter. Also we felt that, because our trailer is a horror, the film advertised on our magazine cover should too be a horror so the readers of the magazine get the idea that this magazine issue is a horror one.

Here (top screenshot) we see an example of different words used to describe the content of the magazine and starts in between the words to make it look more interesting and to separate them. We really liked this idea as it just made a bit of a difference on the magazine cover rather than just having lots of advertisements on the front. We used the words 'Fear' 'Death' 'Possession' and 'Ghosts (bottom screenshot) on our magazine cover because we felt these adjectives described what was included in our magazine best and also related to the genre and plot of our trailer. We also decided to change the stars to crosses because we felt that this symbol was best associated with possession which is the main topic of our trailer.

Because our magazine poster was supposed to be an issue from 'Total Film' magazine, we decided to copy the date, issue number and price layout from the real magazines. Here (above) is an example of how Total Film lay out these aspects. They place them around 2cm above the m in 'film'. We really liked this idea and so copied this (far right) on our magazine cover.

Here, (far left), we copied the shape of this advertisement in this magazine but changed the text that was included inside because we wanted to be different. We really liked the circle advertisement idea because it made the advert stand out on the front of the magazine and this is what we wanted. On our magazine, (below), we chose to have a black circle to relate to the colour scheme of our magazine cover (black, white, red and grey), slightly lowering the opacity so the background was still visible through the circle. We then included the text 'THE MOVIE EVENT OF 2014' inside as we saw this advertisement on another magazine and thought it was really good to have on the front of our magazine cover.

We also included a bar code in our magazine cover which we think is the most realistic aspect to include because every product for sale includes a bar code. This bar code (far left) is very commonly used on Total Film magazines, however, we thought that this was too thin to include on our magazine cover and we didn't really like it so decided to use a slightly wider one, (far right), instead which we preferred the look of and fitted more nicely in the bottom right hand corner of our magazine cover. We also included the website of the magazine above the bar code.

Finally, we included the Facebook and Twitter magazine links on the front of the magazine cover. We felt this was a good idea as people that read the magazine can search the links and like the Facebook page or follow Total Film on 'Twitter'. We positioned the symbols of Facebook and Twitter next to the links too to make it look more realistic. We also included the trend '#takeyoursoul' for Twitter users in case they wanted to search for the film on Twitter.