Our Magazine Cover Production Process

Here are various steps that we took out to create our final magazine cover:

Here are the main elements that we built on to create our final magazine cover. By adding conventional elements to the magazine such as a barcode, price and date makes the cover look more professional and realistic. For the 'Empire' masthead we thought that incorporating the syringe would further help to link both our trailer and poster to the magazine cover. It also seems to develop the typical convention of the 'Empire' masthead, but with previous research I realised that many other films tend to manipulate this element: e.g. Tron Legacy:

We decided to chose the image of our main actor screaming, this reflects the open mouth  in our poster. I also feel that is is a modern day response to the image of Norman Bates in the iconic 'Psycho' by Alfred Hitchcock:

Norman Bates


As you can see we have imitated the black and white image and the actors glare is straight at the reader. I believe that not many Empire issues use a greyscale image on the front cover so this can be a way in which we are challenging conventions. We have also incorporated "INTRODUCING THE NEW NORMAN BATES OF HORROR" to help the reader identify this.

After some consideration, we decided to make our issue a 'special collectors edition' and used a colour palette involving a goldish colour to symbolise this along with the banner at the top stating '100 GREATEST HORROR FILMS OF ALL TIME'; as our film is of the horror genre I believe that whoever is interested in our film, will more than likely be interested in reading into other films from the same genre. We also added the same Logo for REDEMPTION alongside our tagline, which yet again links our poster and trailer to our magazine. We had to adjust the colour to suit the dark background, but by using the same font, the public should be able to identify us.

Here is our final magazine cover. We have developed our previous design by aligning our various plugs and pull quotes and by adding a 'sticker' stating that the magazine is a 'HORROR REVIEW SPECIAL'. We have tried to attract readers by including a free poster and other exclusive interviews and reviews, plus adding in a pull quote of the review 'Empire' has given to our film, which should indicate that it is worth watching. I feel that our magazine cover looks very professional and i feel that we have followed typical conventions.

Our main inspiration for our magazine cover was the issue on Heath Ledger:

As you can see the image is greyscale, but this should not have any effect on sales as 'Empire' already has an established reputation. The cover in itself is quite plain but as this is a tribute to a late actor I feel that this is enough to sell the magazine. I believe that we needed plugs and pull quotes as our actor is not established and we would need these to further support our film and help sell the magazine.