Magazine Front Cover Conventions

Left Third -  A lot of important information designed to attract potential readers is placed in the left-hand side vertical third of the front cover page.
Masthead -  The title of the magazine or newspaper. It is usually placed at the top of the front cover for display purposes.
Barcode - Read electronically and decoded intouseable information.
Splash - Is the whole magazine and what has been put into it. This is a story or photgraph in a prominant place in a magazine.
Kicker - The kicker is a short phrase found set above the headline. Usually set in a smaller type than the headline, the kicker can serve as an introduction or as a type of section heading to identify a regular column, for instance.
skyline - a skyline is the text at the top of the page that is above the masthead.
Graphology - the graphics, the layout (design) e.g font styles etc.
Colour Scheme - The colour is the specific/stylistic/thematic types of colour throughout the magazine.
Screamers - dominant headline that screams at the audience, sometimes with an exclamation mark
Cover Lines - The cover lines are information about the major articles given on the front page of the magazine.
Sell Liners - These are lines which sell the magazine.
Dateline - date of the magazines issue.
Credit - who wrote the article, who took the picture.
Teller - piece of information that tells you what is contained in the headline.
Flash - something on the cover that is different than the rest, e.g a star on the cover, or a 'get on free in the issue'.
Anchorage - is the caption that goes with the main picture.
Vocabulary - this is the text that is used on the magazine, for example the vocabulary would have to suite the magazine, not long complex words for a childrens magazine.
Images - the images that are used to give a particular look to the magazine and to give the image of what this magazine is like.

The Brief

Preliminary exercise: using DTP and in image manipulation program, produce the front page of a new school/college magazine, featuring a photograph of a student in a medium close-up plus some more appropriatly laid-out text and a masthead. Additionally you must produce a mock-up of the layout of the contents page to demostrate their grasp of DTP.