For my gaming magazine cover I firstly researched and found lots of other popular magazines so I could get a feel for what the style is like. I decided to use one gaming character as the image focus for the center, as many others had used characters, and decided on the female protagonist of Tomb Raider – Lara Croft. This is good for a magazine cover, as it attracts the customers attention, and anyone who is a fan of the tomb raiders will immediately be interested.  The background I chose is also a scene from one of the Tomb Raider games, which further shows that Tomb Raider would be a focus in the magazine and is much more attractive than a blank background. I chose a dark colour for the magazines title ’Gaming TM’ as I wanted the focus to be the contents of the magazine, as that is what the customer is interested in reading. I thought it was effective to have the character cover some of the title, as it helps the cover to have a smooth finish, that it all blends together; however, I made sure it was still visible. I didn’t want the cover to be too busy so that it was able to be read clearly but tried to include multiple articles that would be inside, including a highlights list of games mentioned at the bottom, so it was still informative. I chose a basic colour scheme of black, red and white. I thought red would be a good choice for a magazine cover, as it is bold and bright, and therefore catches the readers eye. I mostly used it for the titles or headings so that they would be seen first and give a quick brief understanding of what was being advertised. As the background is darker, the white was much clearer to use and enables it to be read easily, I only used darker colours for the texts if they had a lighter background area. I also used different shapes as backgrounds for the two of the texts, a translucent red circle and white square. This adds more graphics to the cover, making it more interesting and covering more space. I also used all capital letters, which further makes those sets of texts stand out. If I were to continue my cover I would of made space and added a bar code to make it look realistic and ready for mass production and sale. I could also include another smaller image on a side piece to add some more graphics than only the center character, but I didn’t want this cover to look overcrowded, as I think a simpler cover with specific bold texts is more attention grabbing towards a customer. 

Iconic sign = Lara Croft, Tomb, Square, Circle, Bow, Bandage

Indexical sign= Dirt (adventure) Weapons (fighting) Bandage + Blood (injury/pain) Water in background (rain/wet)

Symbolic sign= Red, Game titles, Numbers, Letters, Green, Vest top

I chose my Borderlands 3 background because it is a game being released soon and a game in a series that I love.  Also, I think that the striking character on the cover may draw in readers as they are staring directly forward with glowing blue eyes.  My subheadings have different topics which convey other parts of the gaming industry with the newest ideas in the game industry, such as Apple’s new gaming ‘Arcade’ or smaller news on tips of completing harder games. I included this variety so that there are different things that attract different readers with different tastes. The cover includes another big game release news as gamers don’t all just play one game so only placing one game would mean that many are turned away by it so two well-known games mean more people are intrigued. The large bold font for GAMER (as a title) and BORDERLANDS 3 which means they stand out from the background, which is mostly yellow and blue, as red which draws new readers to the magazine as a strong warm colour. The red also matches the roses at the bottom of the colour which makes the poster more ascetically pleasing. I think the cover tells enough to lure a reader but not enough where they don’t have to buy it.

coming soon

Netflix Theme

Iconic Signs

• Rose
• Grenade
• Gun
• Fingers
• Mask

Indexical Signs

• Gun – Violence
• Grenade – Destruction
• Bandaged Hand – Savagery and Injury

Symbolic Signs

• Red Text – Blood
• Black Text – Death
• Yellow Background – Chance of Hope or Happiness
• Blue Glowing Eyes – Futuristic
• ‘Cyberpunk’ – Dystopian Future