Construction: Barcode on magazine front cover

When developing my magazine front cover, I felt it was the important to place by barcode on the front. Even though that some magazines place their barcode on the back, I felt that it would look more convincing if it was placed here.

However when deciding where to place it, there was very little room, otherwise the magazine would not look aesthetically pleasing. Because of this I changed the initial 'plus' sign. This indicated that there were more articles inside the magazine, but I felt that having puffs on the front cover made it obvious that these were inside as it is a basic convention of this media product and this would already be known by the audience. Therefore I replaced this with the barcode allowing me to achieve what I wanted at this point.

I proposed this idea to my focus group and they agreed that need was no need for the plus sign, so I confirmed my decision of this being replaced by the barcode.