The Conventions of Music Magazines

The Conventions of magazine cover design: Key Ingredients
Masthead (Title, logotype, logo or nameplate): The name of the magazine displayed in a specific typeface. This is the visual branding of the title and its often done in specially designed typeface to be easily recognised and unique. The masthead - also called a title - is usually used on the contents page inside as well as the front cover, and as a logo for advertising and branding purposes.
Main Image: Example - In the case of this front cover there is a single image of the model Shania. The image is used in a classic way, the face is big enough to stand out on the news-stand, with the model making full eye-contact.
Cover lines: From the 1950's, greater competition on the newsstands resulted in more cover lines. Today , some magazines print special covers for subscribers' copies hat we use a few cover lines. Cosmopolitan magazine uses a lot of cover lines, which are distributed around the main image without detracting from it too much. A mistake often made with cover lines is that they run over an image that has a lot of colour changes, rendering the words difficult to read. This is a problem here with the red text  on the hair on the left and smaller yellow text against Shania's skin.
Main Cover Image: This is very large - taking up almost a quarter of the magazine cover - and comes in three layers, each with a different colour. Note the main cover line is positioned against the models' shoulder so it shows up clearly.


I will refer back to this when creating my music magazine as it will help me include all of the main factors and conventions needed in a music magazine. This post will help me to think about the effect that I need from my music magazine and how I can achieve this using these conventions.