Good and Bad Magazine Covers

Whilst doing research for my own magazine, I came across some really good examples of what a magazine should look like, and how well they would sell, but I also came across some really awful examples of published magazine covers filled with mistakes.

This first magazine cover was published with a photograph of Kristen Stewart. This has to be one of the worst magazine covers because of the way she's standing and her facial expressions make the magazine look dull and not very exciting. It may be easy to guess that this magazine might not have sold as many copies as one of their issues with a slightly more awake model on the front.

 The Glamour magazine is also such an obviously bad magazine cover because of the way the model has been photo shopped, if you look at the model's right leg, you can notice how it is much smaller than the left leg. This is something that I will have to keep in mind when doing my own magazine. If I need to edit my photograph in any way, I will try to do it subtly and not make publish any big mistakes that will make my cover look unprofessional.

However, there are many good examples of well made magazines that I've looked at to compare my magazine and use them as inspiration on how I should try to make mine.

For example, this cover of Angelina Jolie includes many of the typical magazine front cover features and the photograph suits the style of the magazine, as well as not having any edited mistakes left in the final published copy. The magazine also looks professional and the colour schemes all match. The black, white and grey give it a simplistic style, which is what I am aiming to produce for my magazine.

                                                                                          

Photo-shoot

For my first photo-shoot, I wanted to have a darker background so I could use the light from the street lamps as an effect. We visited a couple of locations, where I took some practise pictures for what I might want to use for the front cover as well as the double page spread. At the end of the shoot there were a couple of pictures I thought would be effective, one of them did end up to be on the front cover.
I also did another shoot with a lighter grey background. I found that I wanted my magazine's theme to be black and white, so I kept with taking pictures using that effect. I wanted the lighter pictures to show more of the models face, which compared to the darker images would have a good contrast. For the second photo-shoot, I used actors headshots as inspiration, and I wanted my model to be fully facing the camera, with nothing hiding her features.
After taking all of my pictures, I experimented with some colour filters, such as a blue effect and sepia, after doing so I found that the simple black and white ones were more effective and looked more professional. I took a couple of pictures only capturing my models eyes and half of her face because I wanted to experiment with slightly more unconventional styled pictures.
Although I really liked the pictures, after asking a few people it became clear that those type of pictures would not fit in with my genre of magazine.

 

Planning my Magazine

Before I start to make my final magazine pieces, I wanted to play around with a few ideas I had to see if they would work, and which software I would be able to use to give the best outcome.

Front Cover Ideas

Contents Page Ideas

 

 

Double Page Spread Ideas