Contents Page

Contents Page - Contact Sheet

Contents Page mock up

This is my mock up contents page, so far I am just experimenting with the layout but I really like the idea of the logo and title running up the bottom right hand side. Article information and photographs will be scattered yet clearly presented, and the text will be bold and informative, and I will stay within the black/ white/ grayscale theme again.

Contents Page Inspiration

These two example contents pages stood out to me due to there bold formats and good photography. I love the candid shot in on the 'Billboard' contents page and I wish to achieve this same effect with my contents page. The 'Kerrang' contents page uses really bold and eye-catching fonts and the sub-headings for each article are clearly outlined in black text boxes. I also really like the idea of an editor's introduction on the contents page and I myself might include this idea on my own music magazine contents page, as I feel it helps to create a closeness and exclusivity between the reader and the writer.

Front Cover

Front Cover - First Draft

 

This is my first draft of my music magazine front cover. I really love the image and am happy to keep that along with the magazine logo. The other text on the page, I feel should be a different colour than just the black and white. I might now incorporate some deep red or a colour like that in order to add some diversity to the magazine cover. I will still keep with the house theme of black/ white/ grayscale in terms of my images and main text but will stray from this on the front cover in order to make it stand out initially to the reader.

Front Cover Inpiration/ Emulation

 I really love this front cover idea, as it uses a very bold image of three band members presented in a way similar to my own photography. The main heading is bold and stands out more than anything else on the page and really helps to draw the eye. The logo used is simplistic yet bold and uses an effective white on red colour scheme. The rest of the text used follows the same colour scheme as the magazine's logo which keeps a running theme, and the use of bolder and taller fonts for the band and artist names really draw the reader in. I will try and use some of these ideas in my own front cover design for my music magazine and hopefully demonstrate the same quality of front cover as this.

This is my music magazine front cover plan. I have used some of my initial ideas along with some of the inspiration I got from the example magazine cover I chose. The colour scheme is black and white, and, as of the moment I will stick to this and see the overall effect on the reader and the visual outcome of this. I plan to have a very simplistic, bold, white title which covers the entire width of the cover. My photography for my front cover already resembles something similar to the example front cover I chose and this as it will enable me to emulate this existing magazine cover to a more accurate level.

Double Page Spread

First Stage of the Double Page Spread

This shows me beginning the process of creating my double page spread for my music magazine. At the moment I am just playing around with the layout and trying to finalise the text for my main article.

Double Page Spread Mock Up

Here is my initial idea for my double page spread design.

Draft of Main Article

Photoshop

Here I have edited my photographs in Photoshop. This was a much quicker and easier process than with the student magazine as I now feel as though I am practiced in the skills.

 

For this image I changed the colour to grayscale and then adjusted the brightness and contrast and the exposure in order to create a very boldly shadowed finish. I cut around the edges of the subjects with the Polygonal Lasso Tool and plan to place the image on a black background for the front page of my music magazine.

This is the image I am going to use for my double page spread and I plan to have it almost completely covering the double page. This will be my one feature image of the article as it was the most successful piece of photography I have done so far. I, again, changed the mode of the image to grayscale and then continued to edit the brightness/ contrast and exposure of the photograph. I wanted to keep the background of this image as I thought the lighting used created a really nice effect and will blend nicely into a black surrounding background. I used the Clone Stamp Tool around the edges of this image in order to create the effect of the photograph fading into blackness and to get rid of a few marks on the background curtain.

 

This third and final image of the "Torches Together" band will be used for the contents page of my music magazine. I only changed the mode to grayscale this time, without adjusting any of the other features. This kept the image simple and effective and is a nice contrast from the other more exaggerated photographs, yet still in keeping with the bold black and white theme of my magazine. I used the Clone Stamp and the Spot Healing Brush Tool in order to airbrush and refine the image further.

Contact Sheet

I experimented with different angles and adjusted the lighting in order to get a range of effective photographs.

Readership Profile

Photography Inspiration

Mood Board

Semiotics Analysis

Anatomy of a Magazine Cover

Main Task

The main task required me to research into the different kinds of music magazines on the market and to eventually produce a front cover, contents page, and double page spread for my own music magazine. I initially researched a music magazine cover and the different techniques used to produce it, I then went on to research semiotics and analyse the use of those on the cover of another music magazine. I then created a mood board, readership profile, and photography ideas page in order to have enough background knowledge of my target audience to create a strong magazine. I then did photography for the front cover, double page spread and contents page and edited the images in photoshop. I then went on to plan, draft and create my double page spread, contents page and front cover. I was then required to answer evaluative questions of my work.

Preliminary Task Evaluation

Final Pieces

These are the final pieces for my preliminary task. I have completed both a front cover and contents page for a student magazine.

I used a purple background colour in order to stay in keeping with the college colour. I used a student from the college in order to help the target audience of the students in Prior Pursglove relate to the magazine. I used a simple logo so it's easily identifiable and I made sure I used a colour for the text that stood out against the purple background, that is why I chose yellow.

For my contents page, I tried to stay in keeping with some of the examples I had looked at during the course of my research. I made sure the colour scheme was followed and made the contents straight forward and short, so the students feel more inclined to read the articles in full. I really loved the idea of overlapping the images and making them look as though they are real, tangible photographs placed onto the page.

 

Contents Page Research

I looked at several different contents pages from different magazines to inspire my own contents page in my student magazine and found some very useful and effective ideas.

Front Cover Research

I then conducted some research into student magazine front covers to get some ideas for my own student magazine front cover.

 

 I then made a plan for my own student magazine front cover just using some basic ideas from the ones I had researched.

Photoshop Skills

I edited the images for my magazine front cover using Photoshop.