Side-by-side Magazine Analysis

Structure - As you can see the 'Total Film' magazine cover is structurally very similar to my 'Silver Screen' magazine cover. They are both fairly classy and convey conventions much closer to psychological horrors, compared to magazines such as 'Scream' that focus majorly on body gore and therefore take on a much more 'frantic' and packed structure. Both of these magazine covers above stick to the 'rule of thirds'. Both of the main images are situated in the middle third to emphasis its importance and highlights the main feature within the magazine itself. The top third included the title as well as a short 'tag line' for the magazine - "THE MIND-BLOWING ISSUE"/"THE WORLD'S MOST UPMARKET HORROR ENTERTAINMENT MAGAZINE". The top third of a magazine is usually what the consumer will see first due to how they are placed on selling stools and therefore it is very important that the viewer will see the title first to help advertise the product. The bottom third for both of the magazines is filled with further information on our main image and again highlighting what the main feature of the magazine is. 

Colour - Both magazines use dark, 'moody' colours which are conventional for horrors. Deep blues (used on 'Total Films' cover) share the same colour connotations as blacks (used in my version of a horror magazine). They both connote power and dominance as well as hinting towards a gloomy, mysterious atmosphere. They also symbolise the idea that these magazine articles are focused mainly on 'psychological horrors' - if my horror film was known for its gore content I would have used colours like red and yellows to connote blood, pus and danger/gore. I kept the colours of my horror magazine fairly simple too add to the 'classy-ness' of the cover due to the colours themselves not being too overwhelming, confident and messy.

Cover Lines - The cover lines are strategically places around the outside of the magazine on both covers. This is to not draw too much attention from the main image/main article however they need to be advertised on the cover so that the consumer knows what they are buying and can look forward to reading ahead. Most 'important words' such as producer’s names, film titles and 'juicy' topics are bigger than other 'connecting' words to create emphasis on them and capture the viewers’ attention.

Main Differences - One particular thing that I noticed differed a lot from many other horror magazines compared to mine was they tended to have some form of circular shape on it used as an exciting well to sell another of the magazines features. 

Above are two more examples of horror magazines that have used the circle shape on their front cover - the first is from Empire and the second is from Scream.

The reason in which I didn't use this idea was because I felt it added a childish, playful touch to my product and I didn't want my target audience to be younger than at least 18 and therefore I tried to keep my cover classier and simple to appeal to a mature audience.