According to the Internet, children are 27% of the entire population and fall in the DE Social group. My magazine will serve as a source of escapism and will be cheap, so anyone of any social class can afford it. Before planning my front cover, I created multiple magazine covers of different styles, to see which one was the most effective at persuading the consumers to buy it and was suitable for my target audience. I concluded that having 3 little plugs with photos summarizing pages in my magazine was most effective and suitable for my target audience.  

Before planning my magazine cover, I looked at covers of famous gaming magazines and noticed that game characters are predominantly male. The main aim of my magazine is to promote more females into the gaming industry. Elements of my magazine will help to promote female gamers, such as interviews with female gamers. 

I have also included plugs, such as an interview with professional gamers as gaming is very popular with teenagers, so I feel the interview will be relevant to my target audience. The photo of Marian will be an iconic sign and the “Marian Racers” logo will be an iconic sign, so that the consumer automatically knows that a main article within my magazine is the launch of “Marian Racers”. Finally, I have thought very carefully about the sizing of my magazine, and I have decided on an A4 size of magazine because it will be able to fit into the consumer’s bag.  

I have created Marian to appear radical to create the interpretation that women can be like men, in the fact that they can take on the adventure and action as well. I’ve also designed Marian to have masculine features to remove her sexuality and make her like male characters, as usually female game characters have large breasts, and their body is in an hourglass shape. This is also shown by the posing of Marian, usually females are posing sideways, so that their feminine features are defined, however, I have put Marian in a masculine pose, to challenge the dominant ideology and emphasise how women should be equal to men. Marian is also wearing clothes strategically covering her bottom, challenging the dominant ideology of females and the representation of women on games covers. I’ve also included no makeup on Marian to challenge the dominant ideology and emphasise how women and men should be represented truthfully, as not all females are the same as what is represented by the dominant ideology.    

The cultivation theory says that by creating more media challenging the dominant ideology, you will be able to change people’s theories. On my magazine cover, I am cultivating the idea of equality for both males and females. This is shown by the common occurrence of females doing more male orientated activities, such as Marian (a female) is a female rally car driver, challenging the dominant ideology that only men can participate in car racing. 

My gaming magazine will have a main character as the main image and the center piece of the magazine. The colour scheme for the character and background will be more of a dull colour scheme with colours being black and white but the writing being bright colours that attract peoples attention, I will use bright colours on a dark background due to exaggerated look of the character but also the impact the bright colour will draw the attention of people.

My main character for the front cover of the magazine will be a guy looking slightly away from the camera with a chiaroscuro look to make the main character and frame look more threatening to the audience.

I got this inspiration from the following magazine

I really like the look of the black and white character and image as it has that ‘edgy’ and threatening and sinister look which is really effective to create an atmosphere.

I am going to use a real person instead of using fuse because I would be able to get the lighting for the chiaroscuro look a lot easier as I would have to physically do it myself, I can also get my model to have specific facial expressions which I would use to create a specific feeling within the audience.

This is the other front cover of a gaming magazine that I am taking inspiration from, which has a similar look and design of which I was thinking of doing but also the other style model I’ve been looking at. With the main image being a character which is the only picture in frame which you are instantly drawn to, with it being in black and white, but having main and bold colours such as blue and red which really stand out. This front cover uses multiple layers on the cover, with the character covering the title of the magazine and the red target and the name of the game partially covering the games character.

My target audience are going to be young males between 18-24 who are interested and enjoy playing open world and violent games, the reason I have chosen this age group is the magazine will be promoting a game which promotes violence and there is a minimum age where you can play such violent games. But the actual audience would be anyone who picks up this magazine, which could be nay age, gender or race.