To begin creating my magazine cover, I first researched a selection of different styles of magazine covers until I found one that I liked the look of and based the layout of mine on that. I liked the layout with the boxes with plugs at the bottom so chose to add this to mine.

To start with, I decided on my target audience. I decided on 8-10 year olds because I wanted to try and take a different approach at gaming magazines. A lot of magazines I’ve seen are mainly directed at adults/teenagers, therefore I wanted to make one for younger people. I added things like the small stars and a round, more cursive font, to make the cover more appealing to my target audience. I chose the colour orange because it is eye catching and bright.

To get my main image, I took photos of a friend. She has very curly hair so we decided that it would be beneficial to make this the main feature of the photo. Once I had got a good image, I put it into photo shop and edited it to give it a more cartoony, mosaic effect. I took a still life image of a hat and used that as a promotional image to interest readers. I have also included plugs at the bottom of the cover to add more images and interest.

For the title I decided to use a larger size to make it clear that it is the dominant signifier on the cover. I also used a different font to the rest of the text, as I wanted to clearly differentiate between the two. My original title of the magazine was going to be ‘Little Gamer’ but after considering the age range more, I decided it would be more appropriate to change the name to ‘Budding Gamer’, as the target market is people who are new to gaming.

On the front, I included a small list of things that would appear in the magazine to make the audience interested. In one of the plug boxes, I created a character on Adobe Fuse and included that. I chose to make a scary, witchy character and wanted it to be cartoon to tie in with the brief of video games.

Overall I am very happy with my gaming magazine cover, as I think I’ve managed to fulfill the brief and I have been able to develop my skills throughout.