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.