As the cover is the main selling point of magazines, it’s important to use a colour which compliments the core feature image.” (Digital Glue, 2023) Digital Glue (2023) The importance of colour in marketing collateral. Available Online: https://digitalglue.agency/insights/importance-of-colour-in-marketing-collateral/[Accessed 30/10/2023] Good Colour This cover from Sound On Sound has an effective use of colour. The background colours consist of mainly red and a light pink with hints of yellow in parts at the back right. These are then contrasted in the foreground by all the technology on the desks which are shown in dark blue colours, which are then creating a curtain that is leading around the main subject of the image. The subject is wearing a white top and light blue trousers, which also stand out because the difference in the boldness of colour. Because of the combination of darker coloured technology and the subject’s position and clothing, it creates a spiral just by using the colours to focus in on the subject. The dark technology leads you from the top right then around the back and down. This then links up to the same position as the bottom of his light blue trousers, which then leads to his shirt then face. It goes from dark blue, to light blue, to white, then the subject’s face. With a lot of the colours being dark, white text towards the bottom is clearly readable however, at the top centre in the lighter pink part, the small text becomes hard to read as there isn’t much contrast between them both. Around the subject’s name, it has an angled outline on the bottom left of the text, the colour used is a darker version of the background colour, which makes it stand out and still fit well into the colour scheme.  Bad Colours The reason I have chosen this cover by Electronic Soundmaker to be improved is that the colours do not work well because everything apart from the masthead is extremely dark, making a lot of things blend because of the lack of contrast. This makes the details, at first glance, hard to tell apart from each other. The pc monitor is so dark that it is almost indistinguishable from the also dark background. Luckily, the dark blue horizontal stripes lead you towards it and create an outline of where it is. At the very front foreground, there are some devices shown however it is not clear what they are because their colours are very similar, and it is overlapped by similar coloured text. This makes it unclear to see what the text is and what is underneath. The diluted yellow text does help to stand out higher up in the cover, but when there begins to be white towards the bottom, all text becomes hard to read. This is also not helped by the white lines on their shirt crossing underneath as the thin lines start to confuse the reader.  Redesign To fix this, I have added text boxes behind type to give more of a contrast between text and background. The boxes have a lowered opacity so that subjects in the background can still be seen and are not completely covered up. The light grey also gives a bit more brightness to the cover, so it would stand out more when surrounded by other magazines. The second subheading I found to be unreadable so I have left 2 text boxes to be used to compare the difference. I have also tried to add a slight white glow around the main subjects to make them more prominent and have more contrast to the background. This helps to break up the image and make details more distinguishable. References Sound On Sound (2018) Issue: October 2018. Available Online: https://www.sonicvistastudios.com/author/sonicvista/page/2 [Accessed 02/11/2023] Electronic Soundmaker and Computer Music (1983) Issue: September 1983. Available Online: https://www.kv5.uk/vintage-music-magazines.html [Accessed 02/11/2023]