Magazine Cover Analysis (3)

JASON BOURNE – MAGAZINE COVER ANALYSIS 

The first thing that immediately draws my attention in is the mast head at the top of the page. This immediately shows the audience the branded image they are creating and makes it more recognisable for the audience. Although this has been slightly covered by the central image, it is still clear as to what it says and who the producers are. The blue, large font also stands out because it is on a black background.

On this magazine cover, the second thing that I take notice of is the central image. This shows a medium shot of the model looking directly at the camera. This is meant to represent direct address. The fact their eyes are facing directly forward allows the audience to create a bond with the magazine before even reading it and that is what is meant to help make a decision. The central image is usually a representative of the feature article content.

At the top of the magazine, the producers have placed a cover line to inform the audience of another article that is included. These are the main bulks of text on the magazine and generally include what articles are featured too. On this magazine, we see that ‘Suicide Squad on-set exclusive’ is included. In the ridge of the ‘M’ from ‘FILM’ they have placed a photo of the main character from suicide squad to make sure it is noticed and not completely disregarded. There is also a tag line on the centre of the cover to reveal the main feature article of this magazine is including ‘Jason Bourne’ with the sub-tag line ‘the badass is back’. These are believed to ‘sell’ the magazine more to the readers.

Just under the main feature article cover line, the magazine creators have included a quote from Matt Damon. The quote reads “we needed to go big, and we did” to many viewers of this cover, this will present them with many questions which they will want answered and are therefore liely to buy the magazine and read it. This could also class as a feature article cover line as it will be a huge help towards ‘selling’ the magazine at first viewing. 

Conventions of a magazine cover include having a variety of fonts included on the cover to interest the audience more and to make it look more appealing. In this case, the producers have decided to use many different fonts which pay of as the cover does look more intriguing to the audience. The text on the cover is one of the initial things the audience will see and making it all different fonts will therefore make audience pay more attention.

From this magazine, we can see that this cover has used a slogan. These are usually placed underneath the title and it explains the content of the magazine to make it different to the rest. The producers of this magazine have used the slogan “the smarter movie magazine”. This has been used to make a magazine seem smart (as if that is even possible!) and so the audience will want to read this as they will more than likely want to be the smartest. It will make the audience doubt that any of magazines worthwhile. This is a clever choice by the producers as this will lure a mass audience in to reading the magazine.

A typical magazine cover should include a barcode and a price so that it is easily accessible to the readers. This magazine appears to have a barcode but there is no price visible. This won’t make a different to the selling of the magazine as the rest of the cover is enough to ‘sell’ the magazine to a mass audience.

Many magazine covers will have a colour palette that will be used consistently. The intentions of a colour palette are to create a recognisable style and image for the magazine so that the audience take notice of it. This magazine cover has gone with the distinctive colours: blue, black, grey and white. These colours have been used to reflect off each other and have been used with good correlation. The black background emphasises the blue and white text and the grey coloured text shows the depth of the magazine.

As a result of this, I believe this magazine to be a good example as it follows many of the typical conventions of a magazine cover. This magazine cover analysis will also help me when it comes to creating a magazine cover of my own.