The document discusses the design choices made for a magazine cover advertising a film trailer. Key points: - The magazine chosen was Total Film, a well-known British film magazine that comes out monthly, increasing chances of making the front cover. - Fonts and colors were selected to match the trailer while also fitting magazine conventions. Feedback indicated some colors did not work well. - The initial image of a young girl was replaced with an older actress from the film to better attract the target audience. - The layout took many revisions to balance the image, film information, and other required magazine elements without being crowded. Shortening text fit magazine conventions.

1. +
Film Magazine

2. + Magazine Title- Total Film
The reason I chose to use an existing magazine to distribute and advertise
my film trailer is because it is a well known British film magazine. It is more
likely to be noticed and bought than a magazine that has never been heard
of. The logo of Total film will stand out to all British people who buy the
magazine regularly or have heard of it. One of the reason’s I chose this
magazine is because it releases a new magazine every month, this would
be good as it would have less competition to make the front page than if it
was a yearly magazine.

3. + Magazine Font’s and Colours
When starting my magazine cover I had to consider the conventions and genre of the
film trailer as well as the magazine. I wanted to link the two so that they had
similarities enough to know they were advertising the same thing. I chose the same
font for 50% of the writing which was Cambria, this font stood out and looked effective
when bold. The other fonts I used were to contrast the others and make the magazine
fit it’s conventions. Not all magazine use the same font for all the writing. I used
Calibri, Rock well extra bold and Apple chancery. These fonts were different from one
another as one was thin, one was italic and the other was bold. The next thing I had
to consider was the colours, on my first draft I chose white, black, red, gold, purple
and crème. Usually magazines would use basic colours and then have a few
different. After audience feedback the contrasting colours (purple, gold and crème)
did not work well with the basics (white, red and black). So I simply stuck to my colour
scheme of the trailer and left the magazine consisting of white, red and black.
CALIBRI
CAMBRIA
APPLE CHANCERY
ROCK WELL EXTRA BOLD

4. + Image

5. + Image
On my first draft of the magazine cover I wanted to have
a image of the same girl I used on the poster. The reason
for this was because she was potentially the main
character in the film. So I stuck the picture of the little girl
in her pajama's carrying her teddy running away. I played
around with the fonts and headings but something
different look right. I did some more research on
magazine covers and not one had a character younger
than 15 which went against the conventions. After
realizing this I decided that I would use another character
that features in the trailer that is older and would appeal
to the audience more. I took a picture of the oldest girl in
character, already after placing the picture on the cover it
looked ten times better. Having somebody ‘Famous’ on
the cover would attract the audience more than a really
young ‘famous’ person. I printed both images and asked
my class to vote which one looked better, my class range
from 17-18 which is my target audience. 7 out of 8 people
chose the second picture of the younger girl so I took
there advice and used that one. Conventionally actors are
seen in character or in character in an action shot, I
decided just to take a shot of her in character as it did not
give much away but attracted the audience by the
recognition of the actress.

6. + Layout

7. + Layout
The layout of the magazine is really important and there were
many things I had to include such as the magazine
name, barcode, issue date, price and subheadings. I knew
that the magazine cover would not just be about my film so I
had to include titles referring to other films and other actors.
When I completed my first draft I had a huge subheading
saying ‘Ultimate Winter Previews’ and under that I had four
film titles. To the left hand side I had two film titles and a
sentence describing them. Above that I had a red ball that
said ‘Every new film and DVD reviewed’. On the right hand
side I had a block of writing based around my film ‘Grab your
pillow…Ella Allen stars in new thriller!’. I then had the price
and date in the middle of the M and ‘Oblivion to after earth:
The 50 must see movies for winter’ above the TOTAL FILM
title. I was very happy where everything was until I added the
image and everything looked very crowded. So I decided to
leave the image and move around the writing and change
size, font and colour. I removed the stars above the title as
they looked tacky and over used. I made ultimate winter
preview much smaller and on one line, I then used two films
instead of four and placed them on a black strip so that they
stood out. I made the title of my film much bigger so that the
audience were attracted to that first. I Shortened the
sentences under the film titles to fit the conventions of a
magazine (They use very few words). All these decisions
were made after playing around for hours, I am happy with the
overall layout.