THINGS TO IMPROVE FROM FIRST DRAFT

Looking at the first draft (above) of my front cover, I can see many faults that need to be addressed. Firstly, the most obvious thing is of course the main image of the cover artist featured. When I first produced this, I thought it would create maybe abit if mystery and intrigue the readers. However, I soon realised it didn't make much sense and when I was looking at other magazines such as the three I analysed, the reader can practically always see the cover star's face. So I plan to change it to a similar image but of course with the artist looking directly into the camera, creating that closeness between the reader and the featured artist. I also wish to take the image still as a full.long shot so the reader can see the whole of the artists body and not just his face or waist upwards. I will still stick to a plain background to create that studio feeling as opposed to natural.

The second thing I plan to change is the image of a concert crowd with the caption- "join the crowd this summer". I think this makes the cover look abit shoddy and tacky, but I plan to keep the image somewhere, maybe on the contents page. As this image is quite dull, I will probably end up editing the brightness/contrast to make it stand out more- as opposed to looking dull like above.

The size of the barcode is one of the main things I have to change because as my teacher pointed out, it is simply too large and doesn't look realistic. I hadn't noticed myself, but when this was highlighted to me, I realised that when it would be printed out, it would be absolutely huge and take up practically half the width of an A4 sheet.  All I have to do is transform the shape and reduce the size considerably.

The general placing of things is something I need to work on too. I've noticed above that where abouts I've placed certain things, they could look better somewhere else. This is just the case of really thinking about the best places to put things and simply trying things and experimenting so I can find the best locations.

The banner along the top of the page which says: "NEW MUSIC NOW" is something I also plan to change. The sell line, I think, is too similar to "FREE DOWNLOADS". I think "FREE DOWNLOADS" is maybe more relevant to the magazine, as opposed to "NEW MUSIC NOW" therefore I will just change the text to something more appropriate and exciting.

The final thing which immediately grabs me to change would be to add more cover lines. The front cover above has a few but not too many and looks abit bare to me. For example, around the models head and shoulders it is just white space, and looks boring. More cover lines would make the cover look exciting and attract the customers to pick it up and purchase.