I felt like I still had too much space on my front cover left unoccupied, and so I added an additional cover line. This time I wanted to use an artist who was popular in the industrial fame of country music, since my focus has been wholly rural up to now. Carrie Underwood is a very suitable subject. Using a female balances the gender focus and gives the magazine more of a youthful appeal. It contrasts The White Buffalo by offering both young and older artists, thus adhering to the broad audience I wanted to draw. She is a famous artist in country music. Her cover line is:
'Performing in Times Square for New Year's Rockin' Eve'
This carries an underlying sense of omniscience in the magazine's place on the market. Doing a feature on an event that occurred in America shows that it's reach is on an international level. Although my audience is national, the fact that we are bringing them information from foreign events presents the magazine as a reliable establishment. Furthermore the event took place in the past, and so I have presented a broad time frame across the magazine cover. Jax Crowford's upcoming album is in the future and Carrie Underwood's gig was in the past, reinforcing the magazine's ability to include content that is relevant to future issues but also mentioning events taking place in between issues.
The final cover line offers generic, extra information that summarises the overall content within. The 'Plus' makes it seem as though the reader is getting more than they paid for, whilst 'much more' exaggerates the idea of having too much to choose from.
A barcode is a marketing convention included for the benefit of retailers. I placed it at the bottom corner to isolate it and ensure that it doesn't impose on the image. Meanwhile, along the very bottom of the front cover I have included an extra tagline. It reads 'visit us online at www.outlawrhapsody.co.uk for more updates.' Just like how I promoted multimedia platforms but placing the web address on my double-page spread, this will introduce the reader towards a digital medium. 'For more updates' implies that there is too much content to compact into one issue and so the website acts as a supplement to each magazine issue. This promotes the modernisation of news by appealing to audiences with digital access. I used the same colour swatch as my masthead and page numbers to create a link that enforces blue as the main colour scheme.
I readjusted the central alignment of the above cover line in order to show continuation in structure down the page. My initial decision to use a central alignment was encouraged through the text itself. It was more of an addition rather than it's own cover line, so I wanted to visually demonstrate how it was only offering additional information so that it wasn't mistaken for a feature.
However I found that a better way to do this was to use hyphens to act as bullet points, thus presenting the extra content in a list format. This way the information is short and snappy.
This is my first possible front cover, but I don't think I will use it. Although I like the mise en scene and image, I think that my face is poorly lit and consequently doesn't impose enough on the audience. An additional dilemma was that the bad lighting forced me to use brighter shades of colour in order to make them legible and impactful, which started to impose on the effectiveness of the masthead.
By process of elimination this is my completed front cover, and the one that will be used as my finished design. I think that each individual cover line stands out as it's own story, whilst the linked blue colour scheme is emphasised as the magazine's own unique style.
The image itself has a lighter shade and places the subject in a pale spotlight, enhancing my prominence in the foreground of the photo.
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