Front Cover Considerations and Influences Colour Scheme I will be using the colours red and black, with

a hint of purple in certain areas, my reasons for these choices are that red and black are the most popular colours in relation to the genre, and purple to add my own innovation and trademark so that the magazine can stand out. Thus I think where text is used I will incorporate purple into the scheme. Red will be the main titles and headings with Black being the backgrounds and contrast, though a splash of white may be integrated due to the contrast with black.

In this masthead the word metal is used therefore we have no doubt what the magazine is about, we also have alliteration which shows theyve thought hard about the name of the magazine. The red text is popular with the genre due to it being seen as an extreme colour with strong connotations and standout aesthetic look. This masthead is also well integrated so doesnt feel out of place

In this masthead the word metal is again used, this evidently shows that having a link to the genre in the masthead is highly important, red is again used which shows that it is an important colour in the genre and should be incorporated in a metal music magazine somewhere. Again this is really well integrated into the magazine and doesnt look out of place, it is slightly covered like the Metal Maniacs one which shows how well integrated it is. The font is also a very dynamic which also links to the genre they choose this to show the power and energy of the genre. In contrast to the other music magazine mastheads this one doesnt say metal in the title but has something very similar as it says Iron which is a type of metal, this links to the genre through its obvious links to metal and a very popular and famous band by the name of Iron Maiden. Fist links to violence; this obviously used to convey the hatred and violence invoked by some of the lyrics, the colour scheme evidently shows that black is also a vital element of the metal music scene, the font is also very dynamic to make the magazine standout and conform to genre expectations

From this I can identify that the masthead needs to have a metal meaning word in the title and that red and black are influential colours need to be around the front cover and masthead. Integrating the masthead seems to be an important aspect too. I asked the focus group in which they preferred and it was a split between Iron Fist masthead and the Metal Maniacs one.

As we can see from these three the word plus is the most popular and used word for introducing sell lines therefore it would make sense to emulate this as well. In terms of splitting up each band a dot of some kind is often used however a different shade for each band next to each other is used which seems like a nice touch. Therefore I will use some of these in our magazine.