R&P Transformers 3 Empire Magazine Cover Analysis

The main image featured on the front cover of this edition of Empire is two of the character from Transformers 3 film, Sentinel Prime and the all-new Optimus Prime. The names of the characters are even identified of the front of the magazine in small white text next to their pictures, the text is small in order to avoid intruding into the image, ruining the look.

The main characters featured on the cover of the magazine are seen holding a gun and and a sword, and if that isn't enough to make you see that the film is an action film, a massive explosion has been adding into the background, just for good measure. It is clear that the design of the image has been done that way it has to make the genre of the film very easy to identify.

Like almost all adverting images, the colours of the characters is very bright with a high contrast between the lightest and darkest colors, this helps to make the image very eye catching to the audience. The colours of the characters are all blue and red, which in themselves are bright colours, but the editing done to the colours in the image make them even more vibrant. The explosion that can be seen happening in the background of the image is also in colours that stand out, not only from the background image, but also from the characters in the foreground. The colour of the explosion is very bright orange, which like the colours found on the main character in the image, is very bright by itself, but as there is an obstruction in the way of the explosion, the colours have to been even more bright and vibrant, which has been done in this cover image, The colour of the chacters and the colour of the explosion contrast well making them both stand out.

As i have already stated, the genre of the film is identified early on as an action film, however the cover image makes this REALLY clear to the audience, which helps to attract an audience, especially the younger audience, as (without stereotyping) young people tend to like explosions and fights, and with that explosion in the background, this film is irresistible to younger people, and that's without even mentioning who/what the characters are... BIG FIGHTING ROBOTS FROM SPACE, what could make an action film more appealing?

Unlike most of the Empire front covers, the featured image only takes up about half of the page, whereas most of the time the features images are full page size. This does not mean that the image is not eye catching to the audience or a good piece of advertising, but it does raise questions as to why it is not a full page image.

The title of the film is also not located in the conventional place, it is located above the Empire title, which is different as it is usually located in the middle of the page. This actually makes the title less eye catching as it is smaller and further away from the main characters in the image. The colours of the title are also different, one section is black whereas the rest is in white, now whether this was done to make the text easier to read or whether it was done for a different reason , but as far as i can tell, it makes it less eye catching and less clean looking. The rest of the cover though has a very clean look which is common for empire covers, so i guess that could make up for the shortfalls in the rest of the cover.