Film Magazine Cover Analysis - MAD MAX

Empire Magazine is one of the UK's most well known and circulated magazines that Bauer publish es. With an estimated circulation of around 150,000 in the UK, the quality and content is not easily matched by its rival products. I particularly like Empires publications because of the design and layout, which I would hope I can achieve in my own Film Magazine cover.

As the viewer looking at the magazine for the first time, the first thing we see is the main image, it is the most prominent aspect of the cover, layering over the Masthead of the magazine to draw even more attention to it. This is quite a common convention of such labels as Empire or total film, to draw the reader in further.

Empire tends to, as shown in this issue, follow a certain color scheme and layout in each of its publications. As we can see the three main colors are red, black and white which cover the spectrum of dark medium and light, making for a more contracted design. Also the color red works well with this publication because of the reds oranges and browns in the main image, as seen in the desert dunes. To disrupt the square layout the splash has been tilted at an angle with the base color being red with white and black writing over the top to mark it as another main point of interest.

When I first saw this cover I made the link that Empire is sort of the Q magazine of the film industry, I found it gives a similar impression of  class and prominence in the color schemes and page layout, and how both, in my view are constructed similarly. The page uses a variety of font sizes to draw attention to key areas of the page, in particular the movie title linking to the main image "MAD MAX" is shown on the left hand side of the page and has been elongated to take up more room on the side. The page entices the reader with sub texts such as "The 21 films to see this year" of which almost creates its own header bar as it takes up the full length of the page. Other methods include using words such as "Exclusive" and "Discovered" giving the reader a sense of membership and exclusivity. They are able to access information not publicized anywhere else making them more informed than those who don't read the magazine, and quenching their thirst for up to date knowledge.