Research, Front Cover

To start off with, I had to think of the genre that my magazine is and find magazines that would be an inspiration towards my idea, therefore the first front cover I decided to research was 'VIBE' magazine.
VIBE magazine is a well known urban music magazine which consists of genre's such as Hip Hop and R&B which is the genre I chose for my magazine as I myself am an audience of this type of magazine.
I focused on looking at the layout of the magazine front cover and how this may portray the presentation of an urban magazine and what elements that I could include on my own front cover. When looking at the layout of VIBE I realised that the front cover had a main image centered of the page of someone who looked part of the urban music industry which would stand out to buyers as its a give away of what the magazine would consist of. I also noticed that the title was big going across the entire top of the page from left to right. The name VIBE connotes the style and genre of the magazine as this is a well known term (phrase) that is mainly used with people who listen to Hip Hop music as a description of the type of 'feel' the music gives them.
As clearly demonstrated the colour scheme is black, white and yellow. This flows consistantly throughout the front cover and is used effectively to make certain words and phrases stand out on the cover lines. Also the cover lines are very well structured and not all over the place which makes it easier for the audience to read. All of these aspects is what created a good music magazine, therefore I realised that I needed to consider these elements presented on the page and how this contributes to the genre and how I would interpret my own presentation and style of music magazine that would clearly reflect its style.


I then went on to research on another magazine which had a similar genre. This is where 'NME' comes into the equation. Instead of just researching on one magazine I thought it was best to research on more than one to see what was similar and different about each magazine cover.
This example of one of NME's front covers presents the title of the magazine also in bold just like VIBE but only on the left hand side at the top of the page. As we can clearly see the colour of the title matches the most dominant cover line 'RIHANNA' which contributes to the presentation of colour schemes and how they work through out the front cover. As shown on VIBE magazine, we see an image which also dominates the page, which I decided that the picture of my model must be a picture that stands out and that can dominate the page. Its common for the main images to be at the centre of the front cover and often have the image either going through the title (over laying the title or simple on top of the title) or behind the text (the title written across the top of the image) Here we dont see that much of a variation in cover line size and font which contrasts with VIBE magazine which has a variety of different font sizes to make certain cover lines stand out. This put me in a situation as to whether it would be better to vary the sizes and font styles and is it more effective. Apart from this both magazines have similar elements such as the date, a barcode, a main image, consistant colour scheme and good alignment.