Before I started my work on the front cover of my front cover I thought it would be best if I researched other popular magazine front covers, I had chosen to research NME as this is one of the most popular choices, I also researched NME for my contents page. As you can see the name of the magazine stands out from the background, so I thought that my name must stand out as much as possible, also there is a banner to go with the name to show what NME stands for and also to make it more appealing to the music audience. For my front cover, I also chose to have a banner as this seemed fitting and looking at other magazines I could see that they also used banners, such as the one shown here, http://www.musebootlegs.com/blog/images/news_rocksound.jpg. I liked the way other plugs also caught my attention, having a blue box round them and making them eye catching for readers, as I liked the idea I thought that it would be best if I did the same to catch my readers attention and get them to focus on my magazine on the shelf other than other competitor magazines, I thought I must make this look professional also, as it is of poor quality it would not attract the readers attention and would not make them want to buy the magazine. Also, when using the idea I thought I must make the two colours chosen (text and background) to match to make it look better and gain their attention.

NME used a strip at the bottom of their page to highlight further what is inside the magazine; I thought it would also be useful to do so, so that the readers can see what else is going into the magazine, also hoping to get more attention from potential buyers as they see something which may appeal to them.