Thursday, 29 September 2011

Conventions of a magazine front cover

Masthead: The magazine's title. Usually displayed in the top left corner.


Price: Magazine cost.


Date: Weekly: usually from Saturday to Friday. Monthly: a month ahead.


Issue number: A tally of magazines.


Barcode: Read electronically and decoded into usable information.


Teaser: One word/phrase acts as an attention grabber.


Main Feature: Headline: A phrase that may summarise the main point of the main feature. In large print, different style, bold colours in order to catch the attention of the reader.


Subtitle: Smaller headline that may summarise the feature.


Smaller feature: Features included in the magazine.


Images: Size: CU to med CU. Ranges from one main image to x amount featuring one main image and smaller images. Helps make the page look more interesting. It can add understanding of a story and/or entice someone to read the magazine.


Font: Style and size of type face.


Colour: Specific/stylistic/thematic types.


Graphics: Graphical shapes to highlight feature(s).


Offers/adverts blurb: Banner-stlye shape featuring free products/promotions.


Left Third: Stories that appear on the left third of the front cover. This is because when magazines are lined up on a rack this is the part of the magazine that is seen.

Cover Lines: Shows the reader what stories are inside the magazine.

Splash: Is everything on the front cover.

Anchorage: This is the main headline which anchors the main image.

Sell Lines: Short, sharp description of the title's main marketing point (for Cosmopolitan: 'The world's No 1 magazine for young women') or perhaps setting out its editorial philosophy

Kicker: A kicker is a smaller-font headline, often underlined, just above the main headline. Kickers are often a one or two word identifier used to help readers select articles. Ideally, kickers classify articles.


http://www.tameri.com/dtp/dtp.html

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             

The Brief

The Brief
Preliminary excersise:
using DTP and an image manipulation program, produce the front page of a new school/college magazine, featuring a photgraph of a student in medium close-up plus some appropriately laid-out text and a masthead. Additionally you must produce a mock-up of the layout of the vontents page to demonstrate their graasp of DTP

Main Task: the front page, contents and double page spread of a new music magazine. All images and text used must be original, produced by you - minimum of four images.