Research and Planning: Re-adjustment of cover

After going through the final tweaks before my evaluation, I noticed a few features of a metal genre magazine that I have missed in my research.

The first one was a banner above the masthead. This acts as another cover line which breaks the top of the page from the masthead making it more dominant. it allows more space to elaborate on stories and contents that the reader will be interested in, that are included in the magazine therefore influencing the reader even more that the magazine is jam packed with great content. This is why I changed the cover to add a banner.

These are a few examples from metal hammer and Kerrang.

I also noticed in every magazine that the cover lines included around the model do not cover the face of the model as the face of the artist is seen as a major feature therefore covering the face with cover lines
will exceed the point of the models image being there.

For example:













As you can see, the faces have cover lines surrounding them but not covering them therefore this encouraged me to slim my cover lines so they aren't placed over my model. This allows the model's face to pop out more and make it look as if the magazine is moulded around the model.

Looking at the masthead, I gave notice to the fact that the masthead wasn't very dominant. It is big and bold which gave it a good presence however your eyes are not drawn to it. Therefore, I then added a background to the title with a contrasting and strong colour such as black drawing your eyes to the top of the page. As the drop shadow of the masthead is black, I therefore changed the colour to white to contrast the shadow against the black background. However, A pure black background was boring therefore I cut a triangle/arrow into the rectangle pointing down into the main cover which acts as a direction to point the audience where to find the best information.

With the arrow feature in mind, I couldn't use red, black or white to fill it in as any of them colours would blend the other colours used in the masthead or rectangle. This then gave me the opportunity to break my 3 colour scheme into a 4 colour scheme. I did this because a 3 colour scheme can appear to be boring and samey. Every where you look is either red, black and grey and nothing to break the sequence. When cycling through the colours, I noticed a bright yellow worked very well with the dark colours expressed on the cover of the magazine. The yellow wouldn't just work with the masthead however as it would look out of place. Therefore, I looked to change the bottom part as well by applying the colour to the PLUS line. Further more, It will then add symmetry with the cover and the colours.