Empire Magazine Cover Analysis

I picked these three magazine covers because they all have their own qualities and techniques that we could use in the making of our magazine cover. The first magazine cover (left) shows a topless girl, this is what you see straight away. Next you probably likely to see her name 'Megan Fox' in capital, bold letters beside the image. This shows that the first thing to catch your eye is the sex appeal and the second is the name of the actress, which is likely to attract fans and men. Once you start looking closely at this magazine cover you can see this magazine has been named 'The Hot Issue' this shows the the cover is relying on the attractiveness of the woman on the front cover to lure audiences in and make the magazine seem 'hot'. Bearing in mind 'Empire Magazine' is well-known as a film magazine it seems strange that one of the last things to catch your eye is the name of the up and coming film this actress is actually starring in and the magazine is wishing to promote. This does seem unusual but the reason for this may be that the normal style seen in picture two, of the typical film actor and film name, may be becoming boring to audiences and magazines may be relying on things like sex appeal to catch audience's attention. This idea gives us the idea that we need to be more experimental with our magazine covers and think up ways to excite readers without our actress taking her clothes off!
On the other hand, in picture two the close up of the man's face is still effective and some what alluring because the male actor looks like he is staring at you with his unusually coloured eyes, this maybe what this magazine cover is relying on the attract readers to look at the magazine and eventually buy. Lastly, in picture three the thing that jumped out at me was the fact the picture of the man with the serious stare towards the camera is in front of the 'Empire' slogan. This makes the picture seem like its coming out of the magazine and is alot more effective. The techniques I discovered in all of these pictures are techniques we are going to consider including in our magazine cover so that our cover will stand out from all the rest and have the same effective qualities existing covers possess.