Comparison of my magazine and another

Comparing my work and another magazine of the same genre is very important for me. By doing this I am able to recognise the pros and cons on my work. I chose Midnight echo, a film magazine, specifically dedicated to the horror genre. Instead of comparing my work to just a film magazine, I chose one that specifically was made for horror films, as this is the case with my magazine.

When looking at these two magazines side by side, there a number of similarities. Firstly the layout, they both have footer, one main image that acts as the central attraction of the magazine and the colours. The images are similar in allot of ways, the background is kept to darkness so all emphasis is on the object, cold blues and reds are used which are typical horror colour conventions as they can represent death, sin, blood and evil. As well as this, in both images we see one eye, however both presented in different ways, whilst the midnight echo image left eye is covered by a black streamed shadow, my image has hair covering the left eye, which I purposely did to show femininity. Colours of the text are also similar, reds and whites are used on the text in both magazines. In terms of typeface, my magazine typically uses three types of typefaces, and this is also the case with midnight echo.

One difference I would point out is the layout; my magazine has a conventional and obvious left hand third, with the majority of my text running down the left side. My magazine can be seen as either a C shape, which allows the audiences eye to read and look at the magazine in reference to that shape, or it can be seen as a Z shape as some may look at the masthead, then the image and then the bottom of the left hand third. The Midnight echo layout can be seen as a horse shoe shape, which allows the audiences eye to read the masthead, then the text on either side of the bottom half of the cover.

Overall there are many comparisons of midnight echo and my magazine. This being the case, I can understand that my magazine is successful in meeting all codes and conventions of not only a general magazine in terms of layout and numbers of text, but also conventional of the horror magazine, where certain colours and images are used.