1) The saying, "don't judge a book by its cover" is completely inaccurate when it comes to magazines; everything about the front cover of a magazine is designed to stand out and appeal to audiences. For example, the image is placed as large and often has interesting perspectives and effects in order to attract audiences to the look of the product. Additionally, a lot of thought goes into the placement of every single detail on the cover such as the cover lines that cannot make the magazine look too sparse or cluttered. Especially for new readers, they would not know anything about the product apart from what they can infer from how the cover LOOKS. In particular, experiencers are attracted to how a front cover looks. The cover is extremely important; it needs to say: what genre of music it revolves around; what type of bands are written about and what target audience is appropriate.
2)Magazine front covers are a challenge to design; it is important that the house style is prominent but also that the cover does not restrict the target audience; they want as much circulation as possible. For example, this front cover depicted above will have been a challenge to design; a lot of thought has been put into the house style colours as blue and pink appeals to BOTH genders. Furthermore, the design of a magazine includes the placement of the different components such as cover lines, straplines, pugs, puffs and mastheads. Designers will need to ensure that no writing covers a large amount of the image, especially the face as this would look too cluttered and take attention away from the model in the photograph.
3) Mostly, the image on the front cover consists of people; I think this is because human audiences would relate more to seeing humans on the front cover and make the magazine seem more approachable and relevant. Also, on a lot of music magazines, there is often a band of people rather than just one person-even though both can be used-as this creates the sense of cohesion. Moreover, I find that when the image consists of a group, the perspectives are always better and there is more depth to the cover in the models' positioning. Personally, I find that group images look more interesting on the cover. There are also lots of single people though as this seems more exclusive and, seen as they do not need any other people to make it more interesting, it creates the sense that the magazine is more exclusive; the model is more famous.
4) The arrangement of cover lines can have two effects on the main image, draw attention to it, or take it away. For instance, when cover lines completely fill the area around the face of the model. we are drawn to the face of the model which can make us relate to the model more. However, as soon as the cove lines begin to look cluttered, this draws attention away from the image itself and looks messy. I think that the most efficient in drawing attention to the image is the front cover on the top left; this is an interesting image with good perspectives but there are no cover lines anywhere near the bulk of it therefore it stands out the most. The top left cover looks on the edge of being too cluttered; all of the image is covered apart from the head and the cover lines are in front of the image rather than behind, suggesting that they are more important than the image.
5) Most of the cover lines are always situated on the left because we read in this direction. Therefore, this is designed to be the first thing we see so they are important. Otherwise, the image would catch our attention and we probably would not read any of the article titles on the right hand side. As a result, we are more interested in the contents and are more encouraged to continue reading.
6) The older versions of Esquire magazine have a lot more cover lines but they are on the right hand side meaning that audiences will be less likely to read this text immediately. However, the more modern ones either do not have any, or have very little amounts of cover lines. This could represent that the brand became so popular that they no longer needed to attract audiences using the cover lines as incentives.
The images also became of real people instead of the cartoons that they used to use, perhaps to make the product seem more approachable and relevant to their human audiences. I think that it became more of a human interest product and got more of a following. The photographs in later editions of Esquire, after George Lois revolutionised the product, became bolder and more eye-catching. Consequently, they looked more interesting which will have increased their circulation.
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