Kerrang! Front Cover Research

This is the front cover for a January 2011 issue of Kerrang! The issue is based around Blink 182 working on their new album, however a lot more graphology of other artists is shown on the front cover. Because Kerrang! is a rock based magazine their colour scheme bases around black however they have still used some primary colours for the font and borders/additional features. This will be a good idea for my magazine as I will be using dark colours. So the primary colour for the text helps it to stand out and make it more appealing to the reader than all black.  The most important text, such as the name of the magazine and the band, is given a damaged effect which offers connotations of violence which are suitable for the genre. When designing my font I will research connotations of my genre and find the most interesting ones to add effect to my font, or maybe other parts of the magazine such as text boxes and the photography. A lot of information is included on the front cover so they have sectioned it around the page into boxes. They use images for most of the information to attract fans of each individual band to have a look, it also helps the magazine's appearance to stand out. I like the idea of including a lot of information however I won't include as much as Kerrang! because it looks like there's too much cramped together. I also want the main focus of the front cover to be on the image artist as this is what the magazine will be focused around. So I won't be including as many other photos but will still include information for other stories. The photograph used is quite a basic design which just focuses on the individuals of the band and not any other features, because they are working on the album they have nothing to advertise or promote yet. The white background makes all the text and information clear to read and stand out, making the headlines jump out to the reader. As I am using quite a lot of information on the front page this idea will be suitable for me and will work well, it also allows me to use any primary colour for the text. The plain background also puts more focus on the individuals and will allow me to use any pose and lighting to add connotations or semantics.