Draft Front Cover

14th December 2009
Today's lesson i went over my blog and corrected any mistakes i had made.
I also drew a draft front page, its a rough copy of what i would like my final front cover to look like.

Continuing to sketch the front cover of music magazine.

16th November 2009
today we continued to sketch our front cover and come up with more ideas, i am still stuck on what other colour i will use as well as black and white because i still haven't got a photograph yet.
I have came up with a few more ideas that i might interpret into my music magazine.

Sketching Front Cover

9th November

Today's lesson we sketched our ideas of what we want our music magazine to look like.
i wanted to keep mine simple and use a maximum of 3 colours as i prefer magazines to look effective and simple and not cluttered and busy. I want to use black and white and one other colour, i am not quite sure what i want the other colour to be like yet as it depends on what photograph i use for the front cover of my music magazine (festval magazine)
I want to use the layout of the Q magazine as inspiration as i find that they layout for each issue always look effective. They always keep it quite simple and use a limited amount of colours as the Q magazines are for an older audience as the bands that are usually listed on the front cover and in the audience are bands that have been around for a while, but they also have a few modern bands that fit into the same genre.

Magazine Questionnaire

2nd November

Today we wrote a questionnaire to help us with the planning of our own music magazine.
I had to write a minimum of 10 questions to help me get a more clear view of what my music magazine looks like and what it is going to be based on.
The question that i came up with were:

1) What age group are you in?

· 16-24

· 25-40

· 41-60

2) What gender are you?

· Male

· Female

3) What is your favourite music genre?

· Pop

· Rock

· R&B

· Indie

· Hip-Hop

· Rap

· Dance

· Heavy Metal

· Other

4) How often do you buy music magazines?

· Daily

· Weekly

· Monthly

5) How much would you spend on a music magazine?

· £1 - £2

· £2 - £3

· £3 or more

6) What music magazines do you buy?

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

7) What Artists do you like?

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

8) What do you first notice on a music magazine?

· Main Picture

· Main text

· Logo

· Colour

· Promos/Advertisements

9) What do you prefer to look at?

· Text

· Images

10) What colours do you prefer on a magazine?

· Black and white

· Bold Colours

· Pastel Colours

· Metallic Colours

· Dark Colours

11) How do you prefer the design of your magazine?

· Classy

· Cluttered/Busy

· Sophisticated

· Colourful

· Simple

12) What interests you in a music magazine?

e.g. Competitions, Puzzles, Quizzes, Interviews, Articles, Fashion

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………......

I asked these questions so i could find out what is more popular and help me come up with what i like best from the outcome. I asked the questions how often do you buy a magazine? and how much would you spend on a music magazine? So i could find out whether i should do a monthly or a weekly magazine. Also how much people of that age range are willing to pay for a magazine, and what it is that they are expecting in the magazine for the price.
When the questions have been answered by a group of people, i will decide what type of things i will be putting inside my music magazine as i already have an idea of how i am designing and layingout my front cover.

Magazine Analysis

19th October 2009



Today we analysed different magazine covers describing the layout, the pictures used, why they have used the main heading etc.
I analysed a magazine from November 1998 called Select so it was very old fashioned and not as sophisticated or modern as they are today. As a group of 3 we decided that the magazine was more for an older male audience because of the colours, the bands and the advertisements used.

I was looking on the Internet for some magazine covers that appealed to me and i found this magazine. I really like this magazine because its very sophisticated. The space is used cleverly because there is not alot of information or loads of images all crammed up in one space, there is only on big picture which takes up the whole of the front cover which looks really effective. The colours that are used work really well as they are very classy colours and there is only a limited amount used. Other magazines use to many colours which makes it look too busy and instead of attracting attention they are putting off the audience by using too much. That is why i like this magazine cover because less is more in this case.
If i was to buy or make a magazine, this is the effect that i would try to create to attract the audience because it really suits my style and the music i enjoy listen too. The picture of Lilly Allen is very eye-catching because it shows she is fierce and not afraid of the 2 animals that are surrounding her, it links to the heading because it says "Lilly Allen and her wicked wicked ways"
The words 'Wicked' has been emphasised to create more of an effect and make the reader want to know what has been written. Everything about this magazine is eye-catching, it is very classy and sophisticated which to me is set at an audience of 21-35 as the bands listed on the front cover are classic bands that have been around for a while, even though Lilly Allen is a new artist compared to The Rolling Stones and U2, i still believe it will attract to an older audience who like indie music.

I also found this image of the V magazine front cover. This magazine cover is even simpler than the Q magazine cover. there is much less writing on the page as the picture of Grace Jones takes up the whole page. I really like the way the logo of the magazine is mixed with the image. it is really interesting that the logo takes up the whole page rather than taking up a small amount of space in the corner or the top of the page as most other magazines tend to do. This shows that it is different from all other magazines and it stands out.

The colours that are used are really effective as the contrast with each other. The bright pink and the white writing stands out on the black background which makes it easier to understand and read. This magazine has also only used 3 colours as well as the Q magazine which i find the perfect amount of colours to use, other wise it looks to cluttered and i tend to ignore the cluttered magazines as there is too much going on to grab the readers attention. The picture that is used is very interesting and unusual which also grabs the attention of the reader. I think it is really unusual but effective that they have the issue number in big font as most other magazines have the issue number small and hardly visible.

Creating Contents Page

12th October 2009

in today's lesson i started to create the contents page for the preliminary task, the college magazine i called College Life. I used Photoshop to also create the contents page.

This is the contents page i have created. i used the same font faces as i used for the cover page so that it is consistent throughout the magazine. I tried to keep it simple so that the page is not to over crowded by using a limited amount of colours and spacing things out a little bit.

Overall i am happy with the colours, the pictures and the font that i have used but i think i need to change the layout around a little bits as the pictures do not look very effective in the position i have put them in. I think the font size i have used is good because its not to big that it takes up to much space and it is not too small that the reader can't understand the writing.

As well as creating the contents page i edited the cover page by adding more information to it so that it does not look to plain and hopefully grab more attention from the reader by adding things they might want to read.

Making the College Magazine

5th October 2009

Today we took photographs for our student magazine in groups. My group went outside into the garden to take our photographs so that we could catch the natural sun light to get the best quality pictures we could for the best possible outcome. We took a variety of photographs, trying to get the scenery in the shots. We took photographs with the trees and the plants around us because we thought that the composition of them would look good in the photographs.

This is the picture that i have chosen to use for my magazine because i believe it will appeal to the reader as the sun is in the background and we are smiling. It makes it look more effective because if we was not smiling it would not appeal to the audience as it makes it look like it is not an interesting magazine.

I have not finished my magazine cover yet, i still need to put more information on it to make it more appealing but so far i am happy with the outcome i have achieved.

College Magazine

28th September 2009

This lesson we went on Adobe Photoshop to practice creating a magazine for college. I have never used Photoshop before so i found it quite tricky to use at first so i played around with all of the tools and it made it much easier for me. i kept the front cover of my practice magazine quite plain as i only used black and white.

21st September 2009

Last lesson we looked at different magazines and discussed the layout.
We also talked about the Target Audience, which involves what you have to think about when making a magazine yourself such as:

- Age: 16-24, 25-40, 41-65
- Gender: Male, Female
- Social Class: Working, Middle and Upper Class
- Lifestyle: Hobbies and interests
- Ethnicity: Race and Religion
- Region: North and South