Analysis of Star Trek Total Film magazine cover

This is the magazine cover from Total Film for the film Star Trek Directed by J.J.Abrams (2009). The image used for this film is the image of Chris Pine who plays the role Jim Kirk. As Chris Pine is a famous actor and recogniseable face, the magazine have chosen to use his face to attract more people to read about the film. Also, the image has been composed so his nose is directly in the centre of the magazine cover. This is because he is the protagonist of the film and he is also the hero. If the image was related to previous Star Trek films, then only those who have watched previous Star Trek films will be able to recognise which film is being portrait and so there will be a niche target group so Chris Pine is used to widen the audience for the magazine. The character has also been put into siluet. This could be because the character is mysterious and so the magazine don't want to give his background away completely from their cover. The positioning of the text on the magazine cover is quite conventional. There is a masthead, sell line, an archrograge text and ends with the bar code. In the masthead, the magazine title is white which is contrasted to the rest of the writing in the masthead which are in red. This indicates that the readers of the magazine are meant to notice the text in red. The text in red in the masthead are all the new films coming out along with Star Trek. By having the text in red, it indicates that these words are more important selling points. The sell line is mainly towards the left side of the page in smaller font and in white. The sell line is more to the left because when the magazine is put on the shelf in newsagents and supermarkets, only the left side of the magazine cover can be seen. This magazine cover also shows a Z pattern on the cover which means everything that the magazine wants to get across to the readers is easily noticeable. In the bottom left corner, the magazine have let the readers know that there are other editions of the same magazine cover which can excite collectors. This part of the magazine is also red so again, this could be a big selling point for the magazine. The final part of the magazine cover is the anchorage text. In this area of text the magazine have used hyperbolic wording to catch the attention of the audience. The hyperbolic wording used is 'world exclusive'. The whole magazine only uses two colours which are red and white. This could hint to the audience that there is going to be danger or lust in the film and that the film is going to be mysterious which are connotations of both these colours.

As both our protagonist's have a mysterious background, we should consider using this idea for our magazine cover.