Ancillary Product: Magazine Cover Feedback (1st Draft)

I decided to ask our target audience and industry professionals what they thought about the first draft of my magazine cover. I decided to post my first draft on Flickr and below are some examples of the feedback that I received:

• "This magazine cover effectively resembles the conventional style of other film magazines such as Empire and Total Film."
• "The main focal image definitely helps me get an idea of what your film is about and it's narrative."
• "I really like this magazine cover, it's very interesting and the focal image is intriguing. I would include more information on it and make it more eye catching, making it more persuading for me to buy it. Other than that, the design and colour scheme are effective and make it look really professional, well done!"
• "I feel that the typography and colouring is really effective at capturing the supernatural horror genre. I would try to make the magazine's logo more eye catching and bold as it might be hard to notice from afar."
• "The use of conventional elements of other magazine covers make the product seem really convincing and professional. I would include much more information and features that would persuade the reader to buy it, and maybe use a different effect on the magazine logo as it needs to stand out more."

I have clearly received a mixture of positive and negative comments. Most of the comments established that I had captured the conventional layout of a film magazine and that the overall style of my first draft was very professional. One of my commenters said that they felt they were intrigued into what the film is about with the use of the focal image, and that it made them want to read the magazine to know more about it, which is what I really wanted with the use of the image. However, one commenter thought that the magazine's logo wasn't very clear and eye catching, which I agree with now that I have reflected upon it, and I will rectify this when developing my final magazine cover. A few of my commenters felt that the use of colours and the typography was effective at establishing that the film and magazine was about supernatural horror films, something that I really wanted to focus on as it is clear to me that the image could be quite ambiguous in what it is trying to portray and that it doesn't connote supernatural horror immediately. Now, I am going to focus on adding some extra information on my magazine as a couple of my comments alluded to the fact that my cover was quite bare, and I am going to work on making my magazine's logo stand out against the focal image more.