Front Cover Mood Boards

In order to properly plan and create my magazine's front cover, I decided to make a mood board of covers from successful music magazines. Whilst the first mood board focuses on general music magazines, the second is specifically EDM. This makes it easier for me to see the conventions used more often on those covers.

The central images of the covers all put focus on one person or a group of people - though just one person is more common. In that case, either mid shots of close up shots are used. Close ups appear to be more common with male artists, while mid shots are used with groups and female artists. This may be because the latter is more likely to be sexualised or used as fashion icons, and so some of their clothes and body also need to be seen. The female artists are shown to be wearing fashionable clothes, whilst the men are more likely to wear normal shirts that anybody is able to buy and wear, which puts more focus on their facial expression.

All of the magazines use bright colours in order to attract the eyes of the audience. This is especially true for the title blocks - almost all of them use bright and bold colours such as white, red and orange. Black is also used as it is a bold colour. The font used for the title blocks generally fit one of two styles - smooth, sans serif fonts that appear streamlined and modern, or more blocky text in capital letters to quickly and easily catch the audience's attention. At least one of the cover lines feature a famous artist or group of the genre the magazine focuses on, who is often also the cover model. Other smaller cover lines may also name other artists.