Features, Ideas, Slogans and skyline for magazine cover

I decided to make a brainstorm of ideas that would represent my thoughts on what features i would include on my magazine cover. I wanted to do a brainstorm because it helps me think of more ideas, forcing myself to want to fill the page and come up with as many ideas as i can. I also did this for Slogans and teasers, as well as what i want my skyline or selling line to read. 



Many of these feature ideas were based on my results from the audience research that I carried out. All of my respondents thought that reviews is a very useful and beneficial feature of a magazine as it helps decide if they should go watch a film or not. My audience also suggested summaries of films, screen shots of the movie, exclusive interviews and film ratings. Screen shots can be used to make a film look more appealing to an audience, and it’s the only way a magazine can represent a film without using a visual video. For example, seeing a screen shot of a girl, with blood all over her face and a possessive facial expression can be very persuading for the audience, as they would want to know the story behind what’s happened to her and what she’s is going or has done in the film.  I used all these ideas in my brain storm as well as adding a few of my own. I thought a feature on Horror hair and makeup would be interesting, I took the idea from general magazines, for example look magazine is a different market and genre, but hair and makeup can be applied to everything. However my audience may want to know how the characters come about looking the way they do, what equipment or makeup it used. I Also thought of a feature called horror: then and now, which would look and compare classic horrors to more modern ones. Other features that came about in my brainstorm was directors choice, upcoming movies, news, top 25 horror films this year, top 5 recommended films this year, an article on being backstage at a horror film set, Top 10 horror soundtracks and the celebrities favourite horror films. Some of these ideas stemmed from general aspects of a film, for example, hair makeup, sound/music, directors and actors. In result giving me some great ideas to consider for the features of my magazine.




These Slogans and teasers have come from my feature ideas; this brainstorm above shows how I will represent my features in a sentence on my cover. For example my idea of horror hair and makeup, I worded into the hair and makeup of horror. This is short, snappy and explains itself well, but doesn’t give away too much, this way my audience will be interested in what films and characters I looked at in terms of this subject. I also used a teaser to represent the horror trailer I created. This teaser reads 'Disconnected set to be the most anticipated horror film of 2011, and we have the inside scoop'. Although this magazine specialises in horror, I wanted to include themes, conventions and language which was of general magazines and film magazines. Therefore I have been using language which you would see in modern gossip or latest news and film magazines, the reason I did this was because it has around the same aged target audience and to ensure my magazine is a modern one, which is my goal, I wanted to use modern language, in this case, 'scoop'. Overall the teasers I have come up with all give a tease and insight into what my magazine will include, they don’t give away a lot and keep information to a minimal so the audience will want to know more about what’s inside and therefore buy the magazine.  



My final brainstorm was to gather ideas on what I could have for a skyline/selling line. I have not yet decided if I want the skyline to be the selling line so I just included all ideas here and kept my options open. From my brainstorm some of my favourite lines are, specialising in horror films for you, the golden package for horror lovers everywhere, the horror version of OK magazine and also most popular modern horror magazine. A lot of the ideas I thought of were promoting the magazine and verifying its target audience, and in all the ideas I came up with I was successful in doing so. For example the horror version of OK magazine. This is an interesting selling line, as it automatically verifies the target audience and as soon as somebody reads that, they will know whether the magazine is for them or not.



Overall by creating these brainstorms i have allowed myself to have a range of options to consider for my magazine features, skyline,sellingline and slogans. Doing this planning has made decions easier and allowed myself to be organised when creating my magazine cover. If i did not carry out this task i would be confused and be making up lines last miniute when making my cover.