Initial notes on soap opera magazines

By being familiar with the conventions of soap opera magazine front covers, i will be much more informed when i come to create my own, as i will know what to place onto it to make it realistic to existing media products.
Below are some points i will be considering when analysing existing magazine covers:


Font
The main font that is used for most of this cover, is bold, clear to read, and simple yet very effective. Soap opera magazines tend to only use one or two basic fonts on their cover. By using simple, clear fonts, it means words don't tend to have any obvious connotations. I think this is good as if they were to use lots of different fonts on the cover to match different stories, it would start to get confusing and look unprofessional. This means it is also left to the readers own interpretation as to what they think about the soap news.
Font sizes differ on magazine covers, but match the size of the picture they are annotating. I think the size of the soap magazine title and the annotation to the main picture, is appropriate as it stands out within the cover, yet it doesn't over shadow anything else.




Colours
The colours on this front cover make it striking and would be what makes it stand on when on sale against other magazines, using strikings colours, in particular red and yellow is a common convention of soap opera magazine covers. The colours tend to be very bright and bold, and there is hardly any white left on the page. The boldest colour on this cover is the red used for the title of the magazine, this colour is not used for any other writing on the page, showing to us the importance of the title, many magazines use the colour red for their titles. Lots of colours have been used for the writing on the cover, but i notice they have highlighted key words by having them a different colour to the words around them. This is a good idea as it allows the audience to see the key point of each picture without reading the whole annotation.

Pictures 
The pictures are all of popular soap characters. The smaller pictures seem to reveal a bit about that characters currant story line, mainly by their facial expressions, they seem to be screen shots from the soaps themselves. In contrast the main story which takes up most the page with its picture, doesn't tend to reveal as much, meaning from a distance you are interested as to what is happening with those characters. This picture seems to be one taken specifically for the magazine.

Words
For soap opera magazines, the annotations for each picture have to be short and to the point as it is only meant to be a taster of whats inside, but on the other hand they also have to make someone want to buy that magazine; therefore they use words that are exciting, dramatic and would make you want to read the full story inside. Something else that is very common on magazine covers, is the over use of punctuation, such as exclamation marks and question marks. The use of exclamation marks, can add the excitement factor needed to make you want to buy the magazine. By adding question marks, you are directly asking your audience a question, and they know to find out the answer they should read the magazine, so these can be very effective.

The First Third
In many cases, in smaller shops, while on display, magazines are layered on each other, only revealing the first third of each magazine. This means there has to be a substantial amount of information displayed on this area. It tends to be the busiest part of the front cover. You can see what magazine it is, as you can see part of the title, and you can usually see the price, bar code, issue number and date. You can also see part of the picture of the main story in the issue, giving the audience a taster of what's inside.