Ancillary products: What is a magazine cover?

What is a magazine cover?

A magazine cover, simply put, is the front cover of a magazine. All magazines will have a front cover, so the magazine itself can be identified. Magazine front covers will also be used to give people an idea of what will be inside the magazine, such as what stories will be covered and the topics that the magazine includes.

Magazine covers will usually be eye-catching so people are immediately drawn to the magazine and will want to buy it. Magazine covers will typically achieve this by being very colourful, having a memorable title, and by putting their most interesting stories on the front cover of the magazine to persuade people to read (through the cover lines and tag lines).


What are conventions of magazine covers?

A typical magazine cover will usually have the following conventions:

-A main image which dominates
-A masthead (the title within a header at the top of the page)
-Cover lines / tag lines (this is the main text on the cover which will give away the kind of stories that will be in the magazine)
-An array of eye-catching colours
-Strapline (an introductory headline below the masthead which describes an aspect of the magazine)
-Tagline
-Barcode, issue number and price


These conventions will all be typically found on magazine covers. They all serve a purpose in making the overall cover effective and memorable. For example, the masthead serves to attract a similar audience every-time and to bring in loyal readers, through having a masthead title which is memorable and distinctive. The tagline perhaps has this purpose as well.

The purpose of the cover lines / tag lines is to persuade people to read the magazine, as these lines will typically tell people what stories are inside the magazine. This will wet people's appetite if they think they will find the stories interesting, and thus they will be more inclined to buy the magazine.

The eye-catching array of colours serves to make the magazine cover stand out amongst others, so when people are browsing this is the magazine cover that they notice. As people will tend to browse through magazines in an environment such as a shop before they buy, then this should be an important convention of a magazine.