Deconstructing magazine front cover 1

This is the first magazine front cover i will create, it is from the magazine EMPIRE which is possibly the most well known film magazine and is well respected within the film industry. The cover is the months edition of the magazine, June.

I think that this cover is an excellent one and does its job of attracting the reader well. The colour scheme works well, there is a small range of colours used; mainly reds, black and shades of blue, this is good because it makes the cover look very professional. I like the small range of colours used on this cover as i hate covers will lots of different colours as they don't look professional and sometimes spoil a well laid out effective magazine cover. However this is not the case here.

The main focus on the cover is the large red writing, the first thing you notice about the magazine is the name of the magazine at the top of the page, EMPIRE, this text is laid out in a bold font in large red writing, the text here is the largest on the cover, this makes the title stand out well against the dark background so as soon as you see the cover you recognises the brand.

Also in large red writing is the word 'inception', this stands out well. The word inception is in the centre of the page and stands out well. The image behind the main sell line works extremely well. The image is of the main character in the film inception. The image stands out from the page and is one of the main points of the magazine cover. The image is in the centre of the page and his head covers part of the title of the magazine which tells us that the image is important. The other sell lines are around the image but not covering the image, this shows us the images dominance on the page. The sell lines are slanted inwards so they look like the image is moving forward. This is key to the magazine, the film inception is about mind tricks, where the main character (image centred) can do anything with his mind, including moving buildings so the text around him help build up the thought that he is causing the text to do that. This is an extremely important factor on the magazine. The red text, 'inception' covers the image and centres the page because the film is relatively new out so not many people know about it, the text here makes the film easily identifiable to the audience. The line below this text reads; "the matrix meets 007 'on steroids!'", this builds up an exciting image in the readers head, 007 and the matrix are hugely popular films which millions of people have seen, so the line "the matrix meets 007 'on steroids!'" suggests to the reader that the new film is similar to these films but better. This will intrigue the reader and entice them to read on.

Other major sell lines around the magazine cover have very famous new films coming out, which would normally headline the magazine, such as; Batman 3, Toy Story 3 and Predators. Since these major films only have a small sell line it tells us that the main film 'inception' must be excellent as it covers most of the page and dominates the others. The smaller sell lines do a good job on enticing the reader to go on as they only have a small amount of cover space but will defiantly get a large amount of pages inside the magazine.

Overall the magazine cover works extremely well, the main focus of the cover is on the film inception, and all the other sell lines and points fall into place around the image. Also the style of the text is brilliant as it goes extremely well with the image and builds up an excellent cover. If you have knowledge on the film then you will understand how well the text falls in place around. The colour scheme is dark so this suggests the genre of the main film is a dark thriller. I will try to recreate something similar when i create my magazine cover as the colour scheme builds up the genre of the film very well and the whole cover looks very professional and it is very effective at enticing the reader.