Initial Planning; Front Cover

This is my Front Cover for my Metal Magazine.

Whilst planning the front cover for my magazine, I had open my influential magazines from the same genre, (Kerrang!, Q and Metal Hammer Magazines). This made it easier for me to recognise the similarities between the magazines, as opposed to looking at my Research Conclusion, in case I missed anything, and it was easier for me to see them all together.
When I had the three magazines laid out together, I had noticed that all three of them used a Puff line above the Masthead. At a closer look, I realised that the Puff Line served different purposes from one magazine to another. For example, the Kerrang! Magazine uses it to advertise a Readers Poll, and speaks directly to the audience for affect; (Who rocked YOUR world..). This is effective because the audience are involved and will wish to see the results, especially so if they took part and voted beforehand.
The Q Magazine however, uses the Puff Line as a Strap Line to advertise the magazine itself; (The UK's Biggest Music Magazine).
The Metal Hammer magazine uses the Puff Line to mention included bands within the magazine. I believe this idea to be effective, as the audience are aware of included bands without needing to buy the magazine. This will increase the target audience as if there is a favourite band within this list, the chances are the audience member would buy the magazine. Because of this, I have used my Puff Line for this purpose.

For the Main Sell of my magazine, I decided to use either a Medium Shot or a Long Shot of my model. This is because my influential magazines also used these shot types, and they appear to be effective. All three of these magazines also used staged images on the cover, so I am planning on doing this also.

The colour scheme for my researched magazines appear to be Red, Black and White, so I am making sure these will be mine also, as they are effective within the three magazines researched. Although throughout these magazines other colours are used, Yellow and Green are popular colours also, so I will be using these throughout the magazine also.

To conclude, I believe that my Contents Page can reflect my researched magazines, as I have taken small similarities between the three magazines, and included them within my magazine planning.