This document analyzes the design elements of a music magazine cover featuring the band Castlight. The cover uses overlapping images and borders to draw attention to the main article. Sans serif fonts are used for titles to stand out from body text. While neatly organized, the document's author believes the cover could be more eye-catching by enlarging cover story text and adding more design elements like slanted text.

1. Music magazine
Front cover
analysis

2. Mast head Banner
Strap line Main image
Black-on tone
Cover story
photographs
Brief
Half lead
Cropping story
Side stories
Plug
Barcode

3. IMAGES:
This is a Rock Sound cover featuring the
“CASTLIGHT ANTHEM” as the main article.
 On the cover, there is the usual main big image taking up
most of the space of the magazine and then three little ones
located in the middle-left of the page, all of which overlap,
still showing what the images are but also making the page
look busy and jam packed. The red border around them helps
them to stand out from each other but still work well
together.
• The main image has the lead singer in the foreground and at
the centre of the page making him stand out a little more,
catching people’s eyes as they glance at the magazine and
recognize the band shown.
• The rest of the band in the photo are all put into the
background at different eye levels, so show they all have
different heights ,with the main icon of the group in the
foreground, so people are attracted to his picture more.
• We can also see the lead singer of the band paramore on the
left corner of the page . The way her image has been cropped
looks more like a scissor cutting from a magazine.

4. COLOURS:
 There is no particular colour scheme because each image is
shown in contrasts against each other.
 The colors the band are wearing are dark, which makes the text
on the page show up better because it is in a lighter colour. Of
the three little image grouped together, one is darker than the
other two.
 The mast head is in bold red with the sans serif font which
makes it stand out against all the text on the page. Further the
cover story is in yellow which, too, stands out on the black
background. The use of turquoise for the side stories is also an
intelligent choice.
 Some of the colours on the page are used to make borders
around certain sections of the cover, making certain parts
standout on each part of the page. This also means that not
everything would blend into the background and make each
part look different because they are about different things.

5. FONTS:
 The font styles seem to fit with the font size and I have spotted
5 different font styles used. This gives the cover more of a
variety of styles combined together.
 The text is laid out so it is mainly found in the far thirds of the
page. No texts overlaps each other and it is kept very neat and
organized.
 The font used for the banner right at the top of the page and
the titles of articles in the bottom third of the page are serif
fonts.
 The writing used in the bottom third of the magazine looks
rough and like a scrawled handwriting. It looks rushed and
squished together but using the two different colours shows
where one band ends and another band name begins.
 All of the titles are put in a little larger font compared to
everything else and in a different style, which makes them
stand out more. All of the sans serif fonts are similar sizes and
used as titles for different articles.

6. LAYOUT:
 The layout has the main image in the centre of the page, with
the texts mainly surrounding them. It acts like a border around
the picture. The top of the page is organised and neatly set out.
If you go further, the text is straight whereas the images are
slant (most likely to have been created in Photoshop using the
free transform tool) .
 This page follows the conventions some other magazines
follow because four colours have been used.
 A Photoshop aspect that has been used is that the little images
together are on a slight slant to each other so they overlap and
still show most of the image. They would have created through
the free transform capability. Photoshop Layering effects have
been used very neatly as I can see the head of the main singer
go above the title itself.
 The font styles seem to fit for the stories they have been used
for. The use of different fonts gives the cover more of a variety
of styles combined together.

7. OPINION:
 My opinion of this magazine is that it is clearly set out;
however it doesn't have the same eye-catching affect
some other types of rock magazines have. The size of
fonts used for the main story just does not workout. It
could have been a bit larger so that the cover story
stood out.
 It is very well organised, it doesn’t look too
overcrowded and has all of the necessary information.
It is clear that this is designed for the music lovers and
for an audience who prefer to read the articles.
 To improve it, I would have used larger fonts for the
cover story, slanted some of the text ( as all of it goes
straight) and shifted some of the side stories to the
bottom of the page (as all of them border around the
main image).