Category Archives: Component 1

What is a contents page?

Here I have made a collage of different types of contents pages this is so a can get a rough idea of what my magazine will look like and where I can start on creating my own. Having inspiration from professional magazines is going to help me especially when trying to get the right layout and find the right text size and the correct fonts. A thing that i’ve noticed about all these contents pages is that they all have the main cover star the biggest on the page and have the mastheads quite large and then have the cover lines quite small. Another thing I have noticed is that having a model appropriate to the genre of the magazine conveys more information to the reader about the product. For example the man with the black hat holding chains immediately suggests to the viewer the magazine as being hip hop or rap.

Here I have drawn 4 layouts of  a contents page, I have done this to give me a rough idea of what layout I might like to use in my magazine.

My 5 catchy headlines

  • Interview with the man himself
  • A chance to win jimmy hendrixe’s guitar
  • Introducing new upcoming artists
  • A blast from the past
  • Coming to a city near you!

If I use these catchy headlines I will be able to attract my target audience and make my magazine stand out from the rest.

 

 

 

Contact sheets for music magazine

Here are my photos from my photo shoot for my magazine. I will be using some of these photos for my front cover and I will edit the best images in photoshop. My photographs convey the genre of psychedelic rock pretty well as I have chosen the right angles and prepared good costume design. The mise en scene of my images works really well especially when my model is holding the guitar and having taken different angled shots really adds to my photoshoot. The photos I have taken work really well with my star image as they convey the genre of psychedelic rock music and will defiantly work for my music magazine. Some of the photos I have taken work well without the guitar but most of them work well with it. Also having the sun glasses on and off in different photos expands the different types of photos in the shoot.

Production meeting Agenda for 1st shoot

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As you can see I have made a product meeting agenda on my first shoot for my music magazine.  Things i have on the sheet are who my model is what he will wear, his props, the equipment the location of the shoot and the date and time. Having this sheet is helpful because I can now use this information to make the best shoot possible to attract my target audience.

Mast Head designs

Here are 5 mastheads I have made for my magazine in Adobe In design. I have made a masthead and used the right conventional text for my genre of psychedelic rock. I have used AIDA in my work by making my font bold and big so it stands out and is attractive. But I have also made it look colorful and interesting so it appeals to the audience and so that I can sell my brand. The font I will use for my magazine is the pink and black one as I think it resembles My genre more than the others.

Now that I have made my mast head I can then put it into my music magazine.

Brand Mood Board and Star Image

Please click on picture to see full mood board

Here is a mood board showing some psychedelic rock posters and art work that I have found on the internet. I have made this Mood board by using a website called Pinterest. To create this mood board I searched up psychedelic rock posters, magazines, album covers and art. I have made sure that all the information displayed is relevant to the genre and can relate to the audience, this is crucial as I want the audience to read my detonates and get the right connotations from my mood board. The reason for making a mood board is so that I can get a feeling of which colours and fonts I will use when making my own psychedelic rock magazine. It is also helpful to have a page of inspirational pictures to look back on when making my magazine. My inspirational artists are people such as Pink Floyd as their album cover is very good as they have used good fonts, trippy imagery and very outstanding colours to illustrate their music.

As you can see, this is a colour pallet for the genre of psychedelic rock music. What I have done is extracted the colours out of my Mood Board, this then gives me an understanding of which colours I will need to use in my magazine.

 

 

Here are some page layouts that I can refer to for my music magazine.

 

This is a good example of a font that I can use in my music magazine.

This is a star image of a very famous musician of the genre of psychedelic rock. As you can see there are two sides to his life one is very ordinary and the other being extra ordinary. By analysing some album art and photos of Kevin, it will help me with my music magazine. This is because I understand how the media works and they make him look ordinary or extra ordinary.

Here you can see I have picked out what makes a good photo, this is for my photo shoot for my music magazine.

Here is the plan for the photo shoot.

 

 

 

 

 

 

My audience and profile research

Here you can see have researched information about the demographic for the audience of my specific genre of psychedelic rock music. I found this information from the website YouGov, it tells me which generation is more popular with different psychedelic rock bands. This helps me to identify my target audience and create my music magazine.

As you can see this is a dating profile, which I have made for my grandad, he is an audience member who is interested in psychedelic rock magazine. In this post you can see what he is interested in and there is quite a lot of personal information about him. This is useful as in my music magazine I want people like him who are interested in psychedelic rock music to decode my music magazine from the information I have encoded in.

 

 

BRANDING IDEAS AND MISSION STATEMENT

My Magazine name is Radar and focuses on the genre of Psychedelic Rock. I have chosen this name “Radar” as it comes across as exciting and attractive. I am a very big fan of Psychedelic Rock and two of my favourite bands are within this genre, so I thought I would choose this one as I am very familiar. As you can see here is a word cloud which shows the words that describe my new brand of magazine. The magazine will be informative and show personal identity to the reader, the unique selling point will be the colours and the imagery of the magazine. The magazine will provide social interaction and entertainment for the audience making it a great selling point.

Mission STATEMENT

It is all about the expressive art of psychedelic rock music; it’s wacky, crazy and very trippy.  We want you, our readers to be part of our psychedelic world.  We will be bringing you the latest and greatest bands  such as the recent music of Crocodile Pool, as well as exploring upcoming world tours and new releases. We want the world to embrace these new and exciting bands and boost their  streams on platforms such as Spotify and Apple Music. Our magazine believes that every band big or small should be reviewed.

 

My Tour Poster

This is a mood board for the genre of folk for my tour poster. These tour posters are colourful and eye catching to the audience. One of the common themes with these posters is that the text is capitalised, bold and the fonts are serif. The biggest text in the posters are the artist names, they attract the reader and they tell the audience exactly who they are going to see. The posters don’t mix many colours, the colour palette is very simple and they use at most 4 colours. Having done an analysis of these posters will benefit me as I will be creating my own Folk tour poster.  I have understood the conventional features of a Folk tour poster for example the different fonts, the colour pallet and how the text is placed to attract the reader.

Please click on image to see a bigger version

In my Tour Poster I used AIDA. The attention is my outfit and my guitar, the interest is my tour dates, my design is the fonts and the pug, and the action is the website.

 

 

Feedback on the Brief

My poster fulfils the brief as I have used the right conventional features for a Folk tour poster. Such as; the right colour palette scheme for my poster, using the right format (A4), the correct positioning of text, the right font (serif), adding a pug to the poster, the name of the artist, displaying the right information such as when the tour is and where it is held and where to get the information from.

Feedback on colours:

  • Has the design used a consistent colour scheme?
  • Is there a relationship between the colours in the image and the colour of the graphic design?
  • Do the colours seem typical of the genre?

The design has used a consistent colour scheme which involves colours such as yellow and white for the text and black for the outline of the text.

Between the colours of my image being mostly white from my coat and hat, black from my shoes and jeans and golden yellow from my guitar they  share the same colours of my text from my graphic design.

The colours of my poster fit the genre of my tour poster as they are bright and have a warm tone, I haven’t added too many colours together as this is what the professional tour poster makers have done.

Feedback on typeface:

  • Is all the text legible? 
  • Is the typeface well chosen and does it suit the apparent genre?
  • How many typefaces are used in the design?

The text is legible as i’ve used the right colours and the right font and the right text size so you can read when it is in front of the image.

The type face suits the genre as it is bubbly and bold, and it works for this genre.

2 typefaces are used in my design being bold and black.

Feedback on integration of image and graphics

  • Does the text wrap around the image well?
  • Does the eyeline of the model focus attention?

The text does wrap around the image pretty well as it has the right spacing between each of the different texts.

I have put a square half way down the page and turned it opaque, I did this so the focus point of the model catches the eye at the top of the page.

Feedback on image

  • Does the costume reflect a particular genre?
  • Is the body language of the model appropriate?

The costume reflects the genre of Folk mostly because of the coat and hat being that style.

The body language of the model is appropriate as he is laid back and looks calm and this is a common theme in Folk Posters.

 

Feedback on copy

  • Do the words on the page prompt a sense of desire?
  • Is there a clear call and a route to action? (AIDA)

Your comment: 

Feedback on connotations

  • What messages and ideas are being communicated in the text?
  • Do those messages and ideas seem appropriate to the genre and purpose of the text?

 The messages and ideas that are being communicated are that the character in the image appears to be laid back and not worried about anything. The messages seem appropriate to the genre as folk music is usually very relaxed and peaceful. Also the text I have chosen comes across to the reader as very calm and friendly.

 

My Magazine Front Page Swede

Please click on the image to see a better version

As you can see I have re created an NME Music Magazine on Adobe In Design. Having done this it has helped me improve my In Design skills and I now know how a music magazine is created by using conventional features such as the Mast head, cover lines, Main cover star, the plug, the pug, captions, issue date, price and finally bar code which represent the information that tells the audience the narrative of the magazine. Things I struggled with were finding similar fonts to the ones on the original magazine, stretching and moving text around, especially when the boxes overlapped and importing and moving the image of a bar code was difficult as it kept disappearing.

Things I did wrong  were  in the original the text was cropped around the arm but in my version it is slightly to far to the left because you would not be able to see white font.  I didn’t layer the image meaning that the text wasn’t  behind the head as it is in the original music magazine. Also the text on the head is to dark so when you open the full sized image you cant read the “3 of 10” and the line is wobbly due to the different fonts that I tried to re create.

Things I did right were making executive decisions to do with positioning of the text and I think in the end I actually did quite a good representation of the original magazine.

 

Here is the original

 

Here are 3 videos that will help me to develop and improve my skills in design.

Conventional Design features of A Magazine

This slide shows my annotation of a Music Magazine. Here you can see I have picked out and labelled: the Cover lines which highlight what the poster is about and who is it for, The Masthead which is the type of branded magazine, The Pug which is information in a circle, in this case it is the Issue which shows the date of the magazine and when it was published, Captions which describe the photo, Main Cover stars  shows the band members, Main cover line which addresses the name of the band, Barcode this is so you can scan and purchase the magazine at a shop and finally Price which gives the reader the information of how much the product costs. The point of doing this was to understand and acknowledge the basic rules of a layout of a magazine, having done this it will help me make my Music Magazine as I have picked out the technical design conventions of a professional Music Magazine.