Textual Analysis

I have been looking at past magazines of other students and some American magazines to see what I think makes a good front cover and what makes a not so good front cover. I have been doing this so I can learn what not to do on my front cover and to get some ideas of how to put a front cover of a magazine together.
What I think makes a good front cover:

• Large, clear image.
• Big and bright masthead.
• Title that represents the magazine's genre.
• Catchy headings.
• Bright colours, but need to compliment each other.
• Variety.
• Clearly presented headings (can be clearly understood and can be seen on the page).
• Must fill the whole page.
• Relevant mise-en-scene.

What I think makes a bad front cover:

• A lot of the image being covered by text.
• Masthead being too small or style of font not being relevant to the magazine.
• Boring headings, need to grab your audiences attention and make them want to read the article straight away.
• Garish colours that don't compliment each other, the colours used on a front page need to compliment whist providing a contrast but they can sometimes contrast too much.
• Too much or the same sort of thing i.e. similar articles in the magazine, images that concentrate on the same thing or, the same colours all over the page.
• a cluttered page; the front page needs to fill the whole page so it doesn't have any white spaces however, you don't want to overload the page with too many different things otherwise it will overwhelm the reader.