Spindrift Cover Construction

I started off with an image which I wanted to use as the background for my cover as this is something which I knew would appeal to a young target audience. I chose this image for this product because it featured a family with children of a similar age to my target audience which would help my audience to relate to my target audience.

I then typed the name of my magazine in a font which I know that my target audience. I knew that this would appeal to my target audience because I asked a group of people of a similar age, ethnicity and social class to my target audience to choose from a range of fonts asking which one they preferred.

After I had done this I applied some effects to the text in order to make it look more attractive and appealing to my target audience. The first effect which I added was a gradient effect which gave the masthead a range of different shades of blue which I felt made it come across as more fun for my target audience. The next effect which I applied to this masthead was a black stroke which made the masthead stand out from the rest of the cover. 

I then started in putting in the main coverline on the cover. I colour matched the text colour to a colour of one of the objects featured in the image as I felt it made the cover look more professional. Here I chose to use a simple font which I thought would appeal to my target audience. 

I then put in a brief description about the article because I felt this would allow my audience to see whether or not the story would appeal to them, giving them a good insight into the sort of stories which I was going to include within the magazine. I used the same font for this part because I thought it would make it look more professional as it follows the conventions set by a lot of professional publications. I chose to make the font smaller and thinner so that the main coverlid would stand out better.

I put in the rest of the coverlines to show the audience some more articles which would be included in the magazine, which again was because I wanted my audience to see the sort of content featured in the magazine. This also follows conventions set by professional magazines of this genre. I used the same font but made the font smaller in order to make the main article stand out from the rest.

I then applied the issue date underneath the magazine masthead, in order to follow conventions et by professional publications.

I finally added a barcode onto the bottom of the cover because this is what the retailers would use to sell the magazine. Here I included the issue number and the price of the magazine. I did this because it followed the conventions set by other magazines of this genre.


After talking to a group of people within my target audience categories I felt that some changes needed to be made to my cover.

The first thing which I felt needed changing was the cover image. Although it followed conventions set by professional magazines of this genre, it wouldn't necessarily appeal to a young target audience because it could be seen as 'boring.' Instead I have chosen to use an action shot of a surfer at a typical Cornish location. This is something which my target audience will stereotypically find exciting and will therefore be attracted to my magazine. 

Here I made space ready for the minor articles and the rest of the content for the cover. I placed banners at the top and bottom of the page as I felt that this created a fun and simplistic layout which should appeal to my target audience. 

I then put in all the text content for tis cover. I put in the main article title and made it stand out from all the other text on the cover. I used a combination of colours and font style to create the fun and interesting design which can be seen as fun. I feel that this is something which should appeal to my target audience because anything which can be seen as fun would normally  appeal to  young audience. I then put all minor articles and other text in the banners which I created previously to continue with the fun yet simplistic layout design. 

Finally I included a new barcode with the issue number and price of the magazine. I did this to follow the conventions set by professionally published magazines and to make it possible for the reader to purchase my magazine.