RESEARCH AND PLANNING - Empire Magazine Cover Analysis

This is a good example of a magazine cover as it has emphasised its USP of the Joker (Heath Ledger) from the film 'The Dark Knight' . The way his head is tilted down looking directly towards the camera, and his creepy simile is how we could like our actor to be looking at our audience. It engages them into eye-contact making the audience feel uncomfortable, which also may attract them to buying the magazine to read about the film.

The major selling point for this issue of the magazine is the exclusive look at the new Batman film The Dark Night. They have included the iconic logo of Batman at the top of the cover. This magazine constantly has the same font and text colour for the title, which stands out as a USP in itself as it is so well known.

The text for 'Meet the Joker' is disjointed and misaligned creating a 'messy' feeling as though he is a strange, eccentric character. There is a mixture of letters outlined in boxes and some written normally. In white text making it standout is 'the one on one with Batman's new nemesis.' This tag line reinforces this previous text which emphasises the Jokers crazy characteristics. Under this is a hand-written type text tag line explaining to the audience who the Joker is.

In this issue the bar code is on a different place. It is side on on the left. Staying out of the way of the rest of the features on the cover.Also, the price , in very small text is placed within the title of the magazine, with the date above. Again the convergence is here with the website address under the title, so the audience can find out more, watch videos etc on the Internet.

There is the mention of other films included within the magazine to attract fans of those film to read this magazine and find out more about behind the scenes, reviews, interviews etc, in the bottom right corner. This is in the corner as they don't want to take the emphasis away from the main feature of Batman. In the middle on the right side is a green circle with some text in about 'The Coens' who are two brothers famous at directing films.

Nikki Stock