The document discusses research on existing magazine cover designs. It analyzes three magazine covers - one for Dark Souls, one for Motorhead, and one for The Witcher. All three covers have dark backgrounds. They also feature the title at the top and information about the magazine's coverage at the bottom. The Dark Souls and Witcher covers take inspiration from the games' medieval settings. The target audience for these magazines would be socially-conscious lower middle class 15-24 year old males interested in dark music, violence and video games.

1. Research
Andrew Downes

2. Existing Product
The use of lighting is amazing dark mainly for the
character design and light where there is writing so it is
easier to read. Composition is very dark due to the
games past of having very hard difficulty and also the
fact that it is set in a gothic medieval country they took
inspiration from Berserk the anime. The mise en scene
is a dark character in the left and then there is an arch
made of stone on the right, the title is at the top and
the main selling point is on the right where the stone
arch is and the secondary selling point is in the bottom
left corner. The costume is a full set of metal armor if it
were real. There are no props in the piece. It is set in
Lordran a mythical medieval country. The colours that
are used are mainly black, bronze and yellow. The Font
that is used is Calibri (Body). It would appeal to the
audience because of the amazing art and the coverage
of the actual magazine.

3. Existing Product
The lighting is alright because the writing is sometimes
hard to see because of it’s placement but the lighting on
the image is good, good because of the feathers and the
halo with the wings having shadows and then making the
halo lighter than everything else. The composition is very
light the only dark parts of the piece is the hair the
trousers and the shadows. The mise en scene in the fore
ground in the middle is the main bands name and also in
the fore ground at the bottom in the left corner is other
smaller bands with news and then in the middle at the
bottom are the other bands and artists and in the bottom
right there is a picture of an artist, in the middle is the
singer for MOTORHEAD and in the background is the
title. The costume is classic rock and roll with wings. The
props would be the cigarette and the wings and the
sunglasses. The colours are black grey and white. The
fonts on the piece is Calibri and the MOTORHEAD font.
This would appeal to my target audience because they
will like dark music with lots of distortion and everything
else and Hammer is where you find news about rock.

4. Existing Product
The lighting great because of the darkness of the
drawing in the background and then the writing is
white so it is much easier to see what is written. The
composition is lovely and dark to represent what the
game is about. The mise en scene is that Geralt is in
the middle of everything, in the background is some
news and the title at the top of the piece and in the
foreground at the bottom is all the things covered in
the magazine and then just above that are tips and
tricks and they also say about the main thing they
cover in the magazine. The costumes would be the
armor for the horse and the people. The props would
have been the sword and also the wooden stakes in
the ground and corpses. The location is set in many
places such as white orchard, novigrad, oxenfurt,
velen, duchy and Skellige. There are a mixture of
colours such as green blue brown and silver for
example and the are mainly set in Calibri.

5. Research Analysis
• What common features do the researched
products have?
– Most of them have dark backgrounds and are also
close to games or at least connected to them.
• What aspects of the research will you include
within your on work?
– The darkness in the background and also I’ll take
the idea of the title at the top and then
information on coverage at the bottom and see
where that goes.

6. Audience

7. Audience Profile
Category Demographic Content to appeal to this audience
Age Range
15-24 • All of it the darkness the music and the
games
Gender
male • Violence and music information
Psychographic
Socially conscious
type B
• Videogames, they are self sufficient and
have given up on humanity and so want to
escape to a different world.
Social Status
Lower Middle
Class
• Videogames and music