My music magazine front cover!

Sum up of the feedback and what I plan to do next...

I have now taken feedback from my Dad in the video (which is my last post) to see what I should change on my magazine front cover, and I will put that all forward and make my final front cover with the advice taken. I agree with everything said in the video, and I also believe that I should place the barcode, Facebook logo etc all together, possibly on the bottom right  hand corner.

Feedback video on my music magazine draft

My music magazine front cover - DRAFT

 Screenshots of me creating my front cover!

This is showing the process of me cutting around the lips and changing the colour of them from red to blue. The reason I have done this is because in my format research I found that editors did the colour of the title bright red to match with the lips which seemed to draw all the page together. I didn't want to copy this completely and thought that blue could look pretty 'cool'.

This screenshot is showing me in the process of cutting out my model so that I didn't have a solid white background behind. In this image you can see me refining the edge of the part I have selected (the model), and making sure that the edges are smooth and cut out in the right place.

This is just showing what the image looked like before and after I have changed it to being cut out, the lips made blue and the whole image brightened up to look more striking and bold.

My four favourite and most sucessful images from my photoshoot

I strongly think that this is successful as it looks like she is recording a song. I couldn't think of how to do this but then decided that if I put a remote up then it could look like one of those recording microphones. Unfortunately if you make this image much bigger it does look a little bit soft, so I wont be able to use this for a front cover image, but it could be used on a contents page if made a smaller image.

 I really love this photograph as it has so much character in her face because of her expression. I'm not sure if I'd use this as a front cover image or not because of the bad lighting as it gets really dark nearer the bottom and would be quite hard to brighten it more without it looking too over exposed.

 Above could easily be my favourite image out of them all. Something about the composition of the photograph is really striking and would work perfectly on a front cover. Out of all these four images I can mainly see this one being used on a magazine as it has a lot of personality and would look extremely bold and eye catching.

At the end of the shoot we decided to do some fun images with over the top facial expressions. It was supposed to be just a bit of a joke to end off with but I really like the outcome of quite a few of them and especially this one, as it really looks like a music linked image from the vibrant blue headphones and the way it looks like she is shouting or singing.

Magazine name suggestions

I asked people what they thought about the 9 names that I came up with. I had many different views on them including that names like 'Beat' and 'Tone' were too simple and that I need something a bit different, but also that 'Rap.Id' and 'Mu.Sic' were almost too unusual. It shows clearly that no one said that they like the name 'Buzzin'' which I really agree with as it seems like the sort of name you would called a magazine when you were younger. The ones that are the most popular are 'Balance', 'OnAir' and 'Feedback'. I then had to choose my favourite and I think I have decided to go for 'OnAir' as it is different and I've never heard of a magazine with a name similar to it.

Font suggestions and feedback

Feedback and Comments on the different font types:

Student 1 - "For a magazine title I think that something like Arial or Impact would work well as they are both very simple to read and very bold so clear to read. For the other writing on the page I think something a bit fancier would look better, possibly Century, Adobe Garamond Pro or Minion Pro would work best as they are all simple fonts but have slight class to them if that's the style you are going for".

Student 2 - "I really don't like Cooper Std because it will probably make the magazine look cheep like a kid has made it".

Student 3 - "Pristina is a definite no for either the main head or any of the small text as it is extremely hard to read. My favourite font is either Impact (although it seems a bit squashed together) and Arial, as its is a nice font that looks like what other magazines use".

VOTES:

Arial - 11

Adobe Garamond Pro - 8

Century - 2

Cooper Std - 0

Minion Pro - 9

Impact - 10

Vijaya - 3

Pristina - 1

Lithos Pro - 1

Bookman Old Style - 5

Photoshoot outcomes for my front cover

Below are all the images that I have taken for my media photoshoot for my music magazine front cover. I have managed to look at all different angles that could look interesting, with hands in different positions and different emotions of the face. I really went into depth when doing these photographs as I looked hard into costume. Since I am going for a HipHop style magazine I thought that the strong makeup, scraped up hair and big fur jacket would look good and striking in the images. I also have considered taking the images again a white background so that I could cut out my model with the quick selection tool in Photoshop without it looking messy.
 

Final Magazine Mock Up

This is my FINAL magazine mock up, and I decided to completely get rid of the thick border at the top as it made the layout of the magazine look almost childish and cheap. Instead I added a really thin line underneath the title because having the text at the top with the line underneath not only looks more professional and more like a real magazine, but it appears to make the title stand out a lot better. I also moved across all the four symbols as it fits in neater. Next I need to think of what image to use and take my photographs to start my magazine.

Second Improved Mock Up

Here I have taken into consideration what was said in my first mock up, I have taken away the thick border at the bottom, made the title written at the right angle in the middle of the page and moved the barcode, QR code, Facebook and Twitter logos to the bottom. Although I have made all these changes for the better I am still not 100% happy with the look of the magazine and I am going to spend a little longer on the layout making sure I am happy with it before I begin to create my own.

First Mock Up

This is my first mock up for my music magazine, I liked the idea of having the title positioned on the side but looking at all my research the best magazines stick with the origional title at the top of the page which I believe definitely looks the best as it is the most striking. I added the two border lines at the top and bottom and I was planning to carry them through on all of my pages. I then showed this mock up to my parents and they said..

'I think that having a border that thick at the top and bottom could look too cramped together and that it could look more sophisticated with one of the lines or just much thinner.

I don't think that the title should be written downwards, you should stick to text that goes from left to right as it makes it easier to read. Also the barcode, QR code, Facebook and Twitter signs should all be at the bottom somewhere as they won't look right when at the top'

Finding out what people want in music magazines?? Tick Chart..

From this piece of research I wanted to find out what sort of things someone wants in a music magazine. This tick chart makes it clear that everyone wants loads of pictures in the magazines along with interviews, top charts and celebrity gossip, but hardly anyone is actually interested in music history, they just want to know about things happening now.


 

Findings from my audience investigation

Gender

It became quite clear that gender really isn’t much of a big issue as music genres are so broad and guys and girls can just as easily be interested in the same style. I don’t think this is a big issue that I need to think about and it won’t have much of an effect.

Age

From my research it became pretty clear that the age that people tend to read music magazine's is from about 15-25. This is where I will base my magazines target audience because this is where it obviously sells the most. 

Genre

Most people told me that the genre that they would read about is Pop/HipHop style as it seems more fresh and less intense. Most of it is just entertainment. From this I decided that I needed to base my magazine on this genre to get the most ‘Sales’.

Costume

After decided the genre, I researched different types of photos from these sort of magazines, and especially the costumes they wore. It all appeared to be very fashionable clothing and lots of makeup and striking hair styles. I will make sure that I stick to this when taking my images. 

Other

The camera angles were also mostly done in studios with the perfect ‘airbrushed’ look on the models/artists. The lighting was vibrant and NOT all dull and dusky.

Genre : Rock

Quite similar to the look of Punk magazines, they don't seem to have much colour either. Rock is a lot about the musical instruments, of having a lot of drumming and electric guitars which can get very loud. The colours are all black white and red, which I believe looks pretty boring although it does fit in well with the look of Rock people.

Genre : Punk

Here is the genre of Punk. You can straight away tell that images of people that are 'punks' are not often in colour. This could be because the people's appearance is striking enough that black and white enhances this, or also that a lot of punk style things can come across 'scary' and could make you feel on edge so the black and white could also show it being 'the dark side'.

Genre : Pop/Hip Hop

I really like the genre of hip hop as I think you can get some really stunning shots for the front image that are also extremely unusual. Unlike Punk they are very colourful and you can go very bold with most of the parts on the page. Above is a mini mood board of different types of pop / hip hop music magazines and also some famous artists that fall into this category which I think can really inspire me.


Audience Investigation - Age? Read music magazines? Preferred Genre?
 -Below is a print screen of a message that I sent to a lot of my facebook friends asking them to help me with research...

I kindly got quite a few replies... which has helped me decide on what route I think I'll go down and what the target audience is. Here were just three of the responses...

Third piece of double page spread research

Layout:
I like the layout of this page with all the many images dotted around the edges which creates a very interesting looking page. I don't believe I have seen anything like it before. It is really nice as it is very colourful and bright so it stands out nicely. It is also quite fun looking and really brings a nice border to the writing in the middle.

Fonts:
The fonts on this page are very big and bold which is good as it is a simple font up against the busy border which works well as a nice contrast.

Content:
I am really going to take into consideration the content that they have put onto this double page, I really like the idea of how they have got a QR barcode so it makes the page interactive and more fun. I also like the questions on the pages making it feel more casual and offers on the page so it makes you automatically interested. Having a red sticker image on the page acts like a 'stop' sign making you stop and read the page. Red represents danger, pause and stop.

Colours:
I really like the very bright colours as it looks very summery. Magazines can sometimes start looking boring and quite dull so I think that having lots and lots of images around the outside, not only makes it entertaining to look at them, but very colourful and gets your attention.

Unsuccessful:
I think that although the images and the text effective there needs to be more gossip that can get you involved in the magazine so you want to read it, not just for information

Second piece of double page spread research