Codes and Conventions of Music Magazine covers

Companies tend to follow codes and conventions when designing there magazine covers to make them appealing to the reader, these are some of them:

• Bold titles or mastheads are used to make the words stand out to the reader.
• Magazines will always feature a bar code, the issue date and sometimes the website.
• Most magazine covers will feature catchy slogans to catch the readers attention.
• Magazines will always have a main picture on the cover to get the readers attention or anyone who glances at the magazine.
• The cover of magazines are usually quite busy to catch the readers attention and show what's in the magazine, there is hardly any empty space on the cover.
• Magazine covers will always have there logo either in the top left so that when it's on a shops shelf people can easily see the logo or straight along the top of the page.
• Sometimes logo's are placed partially behind the main picture which can make the magazine look better however, only magazines with very well known logos can do this as everyone already knows there logo and what it looks like.
• Magazine covers will usually feature a positioning statement under the logo to basically say what the magazine is about in a way.
• The title or logo on the magazine covers is always a unique font to all the other text in the magazine.
• Magazines always feature cover lines to represent that stories that are inside the magazine.
• Most magazines will feature buzz words or puffs. for example: the word exclusive, this catches the reader and makes them want to read what's so exclusive.
• The images on magazines usually anchor the text.
• Text on magazines will always run down the sides, text very rarely goes in the middle of the cover.
• Magazines tend to have smaller images at the bottom of the cover which show what other stories are in the magazines.
• Cover lines on magazines will usually be in the same font and there will usually be about 5-6 of these, not too many. 
• The cover will always be simple colours to make it more aesthetically pleasing.
• Magazines will try an show clearly what genre they are writing for through the design of the front cover.
• The main images on magazines covers will usually be be medium close-ups, or a close ups.