Magazine Cover: Planning and Magazine Analysis

Magazine cover is part of the many sections for this media coursework along with the film trailer and the film poster. Before I make my front cover for my magazine I need to research on other Film magazines and see how they are so effective. The film magazines I have researched were Empire, Total Film and Sight and Sound. To analyze front covers on film magazines I need to write about the image, the layout and the content. This whole analysis will help me be more prepared towards creating my film magazine front cover relating tomy film trailer for my coursework.





The image on Empire magazine usually holds its own footage. Empire magazine use one main image of the character in the film they are covering. The image of the character is very iconic for example, this Stars Wars character is playing around like the character would do in the film. What is special about this picture it gives out a 3D effect when it is in front of the Empire Logo and the tongue is sticking out.

The content of the magazine is brief and catchy. In this magazine the wording is just the title and catchy phrase at the bottom. there isn't a lot of content around the magazine which rarely happens on magazines. What is special about this is edition is the quote at the bottom saying, "how wude" which you don't usually see from film magazines.

Layout: With this layout relatively not a lot is on this magazine. Most Layout is filled with text around with the image in the middle. Whereas, This layout is framed in gold and that could show that this magazine edition is limited or exclusive. With the text it is only shown at the top and bottom unlike most magazines having the text on the sides as well as the top.

With this unique film magazine the image is very distinctive image. This is image is on Clint Eastwood and the shot the magazines took on Clint Eastwood is Close up shot showing himself from head to shoulders.


The layout of Sight and Sound magazine is familiar to the big film magazines. Firstly, you can see the title is not directly in the middle like most magazines are. whereas, the title of this magazine is placed on the left. The colours that is placed on this magazine are average. They still have their original colours of yellow,black and red on the title box and on other side the bar code and other details. These colours are not a distraction to the black and white image of Clint Eastwood.


The content of this magazine is very formal unlike the 'Stars Wars' Empire magazine. It has some of the font bold showing the reader the important content of the magazine.

The layout of this image is was very intriguing to me because of the style Total Film made. The newspaper cover relates well to the whole theme of the film from Superman.

The context with this magazine edition is very formal taking the ideas off a newspaper. For example, the article "Superman Returns" is catchy which newspapers use to draw in their readers, especially on the front of a newspaper.

The image in this magazine is iconic in the sense of the film because this is the outfit Clarke Kent (Superman) would wear for a disguise. With the glasses and the hat hiding his true identity .

This image looks to me that they have taken this in the studio specifically for this magazine cover. You can see that he is posing by the way he is standing and holding his weapon. The meaning of the image for me is that the character is showing no fear holding the guns and is very serious for what he is about to do.

The content of this magazine is very straight forward because there are only a few words. The movie title stands out the most because it is bold and has its own layout to make it special. The other content is about other movies and other persuasive skills to lure the reader in. They leave to content short because they have the rest of the information inside the magazine for the viewer to read.