Conventions of a magazine front cover

Main Image:

Q; Like most magazines, 'Q' magazine has a large main image that takes up the majority of the front of the magazine.

NME; The main image is of a popular music artist (Florence Welsh from Florence and the Machine), So immediately you can identify the genre of the magazine because of the main image.

MOJO; The main image of the front cover of the Mojo magazine, like the Q and the NME front covers, takes up the majority of the cover. You instantly see the image and then relates to music. Unlike the other magazines that I have looked at, this one is very plain in colour.

Masthead:

Q; 'Q' - here we see a very big and bold masthead that stands out. The colours used are very effective, but yet simple and help make it eye catching.

NME; the NME magazine's masthead is very large and bold. Out of the three mastheads i have looked at, this is the best one I would say because it stands out a lot.

MOJO; Like the NME magazine, you can't really see much of the name of the magazine. But this doesn't matter because if you were only to see a bit of it, then you can easily identify what magazine it is with it being so popular.

Selling Line:

Q; 'A different take on music' - This stating this to show that the magazine is about music. If the saw the masthead, you wouldn't really relate it with music, so the Selling Line makes it obvious on what the magazine is about.

NME; 'National Music Express' - Looking at the Selling Line, you can again identify that this is a music magazine. The Selling Line tells you what the name of the magazine means. So if you were to pick up this magazine and see the Masthead, you wouldn't really identify it as a music magazine but then when you see the Selling Line, you know what kind of the genre the magazine is going to be about.

MOJO; 'Music Magazine' - this selling is simple and to the point. The masthead doesn't really explain what the magazine is about so the Selling Line is there for the audience to identify what the magazine's genre is.

Main cover line:
Q; 'Lily Allen & her wicked, wicked ways' - the main cover line, I would say, is very eye catching with the bold and outstanding. Also, the main cover line is keeping a consistent house style with the different colours of the words; black, white and red are the main colours of this magazine front cover.
NME; 'Florence takes America, 72 hours with the world's greatest export' - Now looking at this Main cover line, it relates to the main image. Looking at this main cover line compared to Q's, NME's stands out a lot more with it being a bold colour and a big bold font. This, I feel, is very eye catching.
MOJO; 'The Smiths, Their rise, Their fall' - The main cover line is in a plain font and doesn't stand out. It is the same colour as the rest of the text on that front cover and therefore is not at all eyecatching. You can tell that it is the main cover line by the size and where it is.

Cover lines:
Q; At the bottom of the 'Q' magazine front, there are cover lines in the form of a banner. I feel that this is very clever and effective as it saves a lot of space but yet is still very noticeable. There are cover lines in the top right hand corner of the front cover which, like the main cover line, keep the same colour consistency, maybe to make the writing recognisable and make the viewers relate them colours to the 'Q' magazine.
NME; The cover lines are like the main cover line, a main headline in red and a little sentence underneath it that is in white. So not only is it just giving you a headline about what some articles are going to be about, it gives you a bit of information with it, for example it could be a quote.
MOJO; I would say that the cover lines stand out more than the main cover line. that all have a white box around the white writing therefore making out eye catching and outstanding.

Bar code:
Q; the bar code is in a very common place on this magazine front cover, in the space that the bar code is in is also the date and the issue number of the magazine. They do this because everything is in the same place and you know where they are.
NME; like in the Q magazine, the bar code is in a very common place. The bar code has been placed so that it isnt covering any of the main image on the front of the magazine.
MOJO; like the other two magazines that i have looked at, the bar code is in the bottom right hand corner so as the audience knwo where to look for it and the price, issue number etc