Break down of first draft of front cover

Here is my first draft of my music magazine front cover.
Firstly I used the front cover image that most of my target audience liked, I asked them to look at a recent blog post and to pick which front cover appealed to them and this was the chosen one. This was one of my favourites as it fits the theme that I wanted to use and also it looks relaxed and not to poesy. I confirmed with my model noel and she also liked this image, I think it is good to use for a front cover image as it is a full body shot however is unusual as it is not showing every part of her body. I have looked at recent NME magazines and there are no front cover images like this therefore it is not following the conventions, I did a recent blog post with images that I liked which looked rather indie so I took that inspiration rather than any of the images on any magazines, the images that I found did not look like any of the images that would go with my specific theme therefore I think this one works well. When I edited it I used pixlr which is the website that I normally use I did find this easier as I have used it a lot of times before firstly I used an overlay of vingette and then added the ink boarder. I will defiantly use this effect for my front cover and will always use the same edit of the photograph. I looked at some popular NME front covers and looked at what they included in that issue of the magazine, this allowed me to look at some of their sell lines and then change them slightly for my magazine. As my magazine is at the end of the year I thought it was ideal to have 'Meet the stars of 2013' also I looked at some interesting words to use for the ticket scandal and found on the thesaurus website Ritzy which was the word that I used. Also as my genre of music is soft indie I thought that the main sell line 'Noel's Addiction to music' worked well. A lot of musicians are known for their addiction to drugs and alcohol however as my image is soft and clean I thought it would be good to use addiction to music instead. Also this will allow me to make the interview interesting and could attract my target audience as it is an intriguing sell line. All of my fonts that I used are sans which makes it less formal and makes it more engaging to my audience as they are quite young they do not want to read something that looks rather boring.
So on to the good and bad points of the draft for my front cover.

Good Points

The + and the box that adds extra information. People say that it stands out and is a good way to make things less cluttered on the front page. Also this could be used on every front cover for the magazine so it is consistent. For some added ideas they said to use the + throughout the magazine in articles, contents page ect. The font of the masthead is good and they like the two colours, they also like the extra turquoise colour for some text. They like the fonts that I used and the position that they are on the page.

Bad Points

The masthead could be bigger so that it can be seen easier by the target audience, also the 'December 2013 and Issue 1 £2.20' could be placed on the bottom right hand corner to allow the masthead to be bigger. 'The XX' could be in bold and the circles need to be lower so that it doesn't overlap the border. I will change the sell lines font as I think it doesn't really go with the image however if I do not find anything else that I like I will still keep this one. If I don't change the fonts then I will have to make the main sell line bigger or a different colour as it doesn't stand out from the others.