Why is the front cover so important?

The editor’s main concern is what’s on the cover, because it projects an image, attracts the audience and consumers and tells us about the magazine. The front cover is the image/face of the magazine, it establishes a brand image which makes us aware of the magazine and makes it easy for people to identify the magazine. It’s important because people are most likely to buy a magazine because the front cover appealed to them; therefore if the front cover doesn’t look good/appealing then people won’t buy it.

Although Kerrang! is a rock magazine, the editor makes sure the cover appeals to the whole of its readership by covering all aspects of music, the editor does this by having a sub-genre of music such as indie and punk.
As Kerrang!s target audience are mostly teenagers, the ‘main sells’ on the cover are the freebies such as poster, stickers, calendars, etc. They also have exclusive interviews of famous musicians and publish special edition promotion magazines to attract new buyers. Kerrang tries to draw in and keep its readers by turning their mag. into a collector’s item, e.g. collect all five covers of each member of the group My Chemical Romance.

Kerrang! features a CD on their magazines occasionally, the effect of having a cover-mounted CD is that it makes the magazine exclusive, appeals to the eye and boosts up sales. However it doesn’t always necessarily boosts up sales, because if a CD is featured all the time there would be fewer sales due to an increase in cost production which also pushes up the price of the magazine itself, people will also start to expect free CD’s all the time and might get bored of it. Mixmag magazine always features a CD on their cover because once again it boosts up sales, however this doesn’t always happen. Having a cover mounted CD on every issue is very expensive and time consuming, this obviously means costs of production increases which then affects the price of the magazine and passes on to the consumer.

There are so many areas on a magazine but the two most important areas are the LOGO and the Sweet Spot. The logo is very important because it is the brand image of the magazine; it helps the reader identify the magazine and makes it recognisable, even though sometimes the logo may be covered it is still recognisable. The sweet spot on a magazine is what draws the reader to the magazine first, it usually has words like “FREE” and “PLUS”; this is done to tempt the readers to buy the mag. The two most important things magazines try to do on their cover is to reassure you of the magazine and to show the readers something different each time so they don’t get bored.