When picking my adverts, I had to make sure that they followed the conventions and were appropriate for my target audiences. My demographic is young adults who like to go to gigs and festivals so I kept this in mind when picking my adverts.

The first advertisement I chose was for ‘DOWNLOAD Festival 2021’. I felt this was appropriate as it’s a popular festival among fans of the genre and also because I mention it on my contents page.

The second advert I chose was a poster promoting Bring me the Horizon (BMTH)’s new EP and tour. BMTH are one of the biggest and most mainstream bands right now so it follows conventions and also is interesting and relevant for my target audience.

What’s new?

• ‘Apothis’ logo instead of the word
• Italics for the quote and moved closer
• Added edition and price
• Added another red line
• Wrapped text around Charlie’s top
• Added another artist to the cover (attack attack ! album)

What’s new?

• Just numbers, no ‘pg’
• New featured front cover
• Used download logo instead of text
• Changed ‘article’ to ‘exclusive feature’
• De-hyphenated
• Moved text further from the edge
• Got rid of ‘for my article’
• Fixed typo: ‘knowledge’
• ‘Until now’ in colour
• Every time I mention Breakdown I used the logo

What’s new?

• Adjusted line spacing on the banner
• Removed hyphens
• Fixed typos: ‘headbang’ & ‘sense’
• Changed words to numbers in banner
• Quotes centered
• Only 1 mention of the photographer
• Breakdown logo in the top right corner

What I need to do next

Front cover

• Typo Mitchell*
• Fill empty space on t-shirt
• Make CD clear that it’s a CD
• Put pug on an angle

Contents Page

• Get rid of ‘pg’
• Add space between the two stories
• ‘GIGS’ and ‘NEWS’ font size
• Page 3*

Double Page Spread

• Align text at the bottom
• Add something to show end of article

 

My DPS (double page spread) needed some tweaks after the first draft. In photoshop I brightened up the image on the right as it was a bit too dark on my first draft. I also added the magazine logo to the banner and made sure that the spacing in my banner was all the same to make it look clean and professional. I changed the slanted bars on the top right and bottom left from red to the black and white stripes to keep the branding consistent. I made the by line text bigger and added a drop cap at the start of the article to finish it off.

What’s next

• Adjust line spacing on banner
• Remove hyphens
• *headbang on every listen
• Use numbers not words in the banner
• *sense
• line spacing between numbers and coverline in the banner bar
• Center the quotes
• Two mentions of photographer
• Could put breakdown logo on top right hand corner

For my second draft of my contents page, there was quite a lot of work that needed to be done to it as my first draft had only place holder text under my headings. I wrote different news, features, posters, reviews and gigs information about what would be included in the magazine. I had to keep in mind my genre and use bands and artist who are popular in Hardcore music right now. The small summaries had to be grabbing and spike the readers interest so I stayed brief but left the reader wanting to read more. I also made sure to include page numbers so that the reader actually know where to read more. I filled out the editors note which I forgot to write the editor’s name so I will make sure to add that in my final draft.

Layout wise, I felt that it looked empty down the right hand side so I added the slanted black and white stripes which I decided to use again on the double page spread as part of the magazine’s branding. I also created space at the bottom for an add from the magazine selling their new digital radio station.

What’s next

• Charlies face is too dark
• No “pg.”
• Have a whole new cover
• Add a download festival logo
• Change “article” to “exclusive feature”
• De-hyphenate
• Varials too near the edge
• ‘For my article’….no need….
• Typo knowledge
• ‘Until now’ in colour
• Do the stories overlap and change page numbers?
• Every time I mention Breakdown – use the logo

This is my second draft of my front page. Using Indesign, I’ve added the missing conventions from my first draft such as a pug in the top left, a barcode placed in the same place you would typically find it on other magazines, an inset advertising a free poster of the cover star. I went back into photoshop and refined the layer mask around my cover star’s hat and hair.

What’s next

• ‘Apothis’ logo instead of the word
• Italics for the quote and move closer
• Add edition and price
• Add another red line
• Wrap Charlie Spicer around his t-shirt
• Who tells us?
• Need some other artists on the front otherwise all about one artist?
• Include edition issue and price

This is the first draft of my double page spread for my music magazine. For the layout I followed a conventional look with text on the left and the star image on the right. On the far left I included a ‘Top 5 Apothis tracks’ which talks about songs from the album which was release at the time of the tour the article refers to. For the headlines and the quotations I used a bold font to make it stand out and grab the reader’s attention. The main body of text was a serif font in black on a white background which makes it easy to read and doesn’t strain the eyes.

Targets for draft 2

• Add in a small box of info by the page number about whats on the next page
• Make the by line text bigger
• Brighten up the image on the right
• Clean up the cut around the headline text