Front Cover Research 4 - Genre specific - Acoustic magazine

On this magazine, I instantly noticed the masthead, I think it is very simple, I like the san serif font and also the way the letters are very compact and pushed together, also how it covers around one fifth of the page and goes straight across the top of the magazine, this makes the masthead recognisable and has become the housestyle of the magazine so customers instantly identify the magazine and purchase it.
The masthead has also followed the convention of a music magazine in the way that the subject of the front cover is placed in front of the masthead and the masthead travels behind the subject however, due to the housestyle, the part of the masthead that is showing is still easy to recognise meaning it will still be purchased by fans of the magazine without question and this then links to brand identity.

I think the image of the subject is also very effective not withstanding the pose is very simplistic, you can see his guitar and I think this and the name of the magazine create synergy and is a very strong feature when recognised by the customer. The grey background does not seem to create a huge effect however it still works well with the red colour scheme that appears on the issue as the red blatantly contrasts with the pale grey and stands out miraculously. I do not think the outfit of the subject relates to anything else on the front cover and I personally don't think it relates to his genre of music therefore this breaks the convention of Richard Dyer's theory of representation. I also think that the fact the subject of the front cover is making eye contact is effective as it is following another convention of a music magazine and that with the banner having a quote from him underneath his face, this also creates synergy as these two features working together gives off the feel that he is stating this to the customer as an individual, not just as a statement for the magazine.

I think the banner across the top of the page is also very effective as it is showing reference to another article however the way they have worded the text makes it sound interesting and due to the fact it is about a companies rise to fame it is clearly an interesting article so it is in a red banner so it stands out clearly to be identified by the reader.

This has influenced my planning and research as I like the way there isn't a lot crowding the front cover and I also like how the front cover star's guitar is included in the picture and finally I like how synergy is created from the colour of some of the text linking with the banner on the page. I may choose top use these features in my magazine as I think they're effective.