Common Conventions of Magazine Covers

• Bold eye-catching logo in a style appropriate for the target audience. – Easily recognisable by current readers.
• Main central image that links with the cover title. - Often a known celebrity to attract new readers who know, and want to read about, the star.
• Large cover title relating with the main image.
• Features and other article headlines from within the magazine to get customers to want to read it.
• Extra promotion to sell other copies of the magazine.
• Competitions that customers may be instrested in entering, and therefore will be persuaded to buy.
• Barcode and price of the magazine.
• Date of the issue - so it is relevant to current readers who want to read about present or future news.
• Quotes taken from the articles inside.
• Mentions of famous names featured inside the magazine.

All three of these magazine use the majority of these conventions, however each is used differently according to the target audience. Kerrang! and Rocksound both target the rock and metal audience, so therefore their colour schemes and typeface styles are more edgy and dark. They often use the colour schemes red, white and black to target a more extreme audience. Q magazine, however, features the indie music scene, so their colour schemes and cover photos are more soft, and fit with the elegant font used in the logo.