Double Page Spread 3

In todays lesson I focused on the text in the double page spread. I had previously decided to show an interview and continued this idea. I wasnt really sure what to write about so I had a look in some other country music magazines at their interviews with stars and used some of their questions and also some of the answers to put into my own words and create a character which would seem some what appealing to the readers. So far I have written about the interviewers and Laurens meeting where they first say hello and then get in to the questions that Lauren is asked. I continued with these questions and answers and then thought it would be interesting to have different colours for each section, for example the questions would be white and the answers would be black. I thought this would be a good way of seperating the two and making the overall double page spread more interesting to look at and much more appealing to read rather then all the text being black. Also in todays lesson, when I had finished my writing noticed that there was a large gap underneath the text which made the page seem to spread out and a bit messy so I moved the writing down a little bit and moved accross some of the writing from the other page and put in some more questions and answers. Although whilst doing this I found that large writing at the bottom of the page would be a good idea. I tried out some different fonts and colours and tried some different things I could say at the bottom of the page. I thought using Laurens name would be interesting as it refers to her name in the text underneath the heading of the two pages but it dosent acctually say who it is anywhere else and people would probobly get confused and wonder who she was if they didnt already know. I finally decided to use Laurens name to put on the bottom of the page to make the page stand out more aslo.

Double Page Spread 2

I was originally planning to use my main article feature of 'Christanium' however I thought it would be interesting to try to put in different types of people as my magazine woulod have to appeal to more then one person to be able to sell. So I decided to introduce a new country artist. Even though she is not mentioned on my front cover I thought that I could just make it seem as if it is the same magazine just a different issue. Today I started on my double page spread. I put into consideration my ideas about my double page spread and thought that I could just use cut out images and edit them on but it would look much better to do something fun with it. I had taken a picture of Lauren with her hands over her eyes, which I thought could look interesting, so I cut half the picture and changed the background colour to a mutual tone. However as I tried to cut out the background of the picture I accidently deleted the picture so I decided it would be easier to start again, I repeated this and managed to make the background the same colour as the page, I then found the other picture I had edited and pasted that on top of the other one to see what the effect was. I didnt think that it would come out well at all but I liked how the two pictures blended together so I decided to keep it how it was. I made the background of the double page spread a green colour which blended nicely with the colours in the picture. I realised that I had cut the picture so it only had half of Laurens hand showing so I thought it could look interesting to put a black line next to the picture to cover the end of her hand and to also make the picture stand out more.

Double page spread

For my double page spread I am going to have an interview with the main feature article which is presented on my front cover. My ideas that I have come up with so far is to have one page of the double page spread as a photo of the band and the other showing an interview that had been done with the band. I was thinking this would be an interesting thing to do, however I also think that it could be a bit boring just having a picture taking up the page so another idea I have is to have single pictures of each band member without a background and use it to go neatly around the page, although I am considering having one picture with just the band on and then cutting them out of the background and going behind the text.

Editing my plugs

When I started to edit my plugs I decided that it would be better to make the main feature article to be much more emphasised then the rest of the articles that are being described on the page. I thought that maybe if I use a different font for the bands name it would stand out. After trying this I realised that it dosent look much different to the other writing around it advertising the other articles in the magazine. Looking at the material I have at the moment, I like the writing and font size of the the writing around 'Christanium' so I tried to think of another way for the bands name to stand out. I tried out loads of different tools which could enhance my idea and came across a tool called 'stroke'. This tool puts a border around the outside of the word and can use a different colour to emphasise the word around the outside. I finally decided to use the colour yellow for the outside of the writing which could go with the background pictures without blending in with it.

For the fonts I have used French Script MT for 'Christanium' and used 'Georgia' for the other writing for 'On The Inside' along with 'Times New Roman' for 'Peoples Choice Awards' and 'ConcursoItalian B...' for 'Upcoming gigs' and other writing on the page. I thought it would be a good idea to use different font styles to make the writing appeal more to the audience.

Main Article Photo and Plugs

In todays lesson I focused more on the background and editing the pictures. I edited all the pictures I had liked from the ones I took the other day. The picture I chose to do was one I edited to emphasise the colour in the picture which is what was the most voted when I asked the target audience what colours they would like to see on a country music magazine, as they prefered the colours of the background rather then a plain colour. However I liked the idea of having the colour of the background one colour, although the picture that was chosen has a white background which is the pictures acctuall background colour so I felt that there was more variation in how people wanted the background, as it is a plain background but is the general background of the picture.

Looking at the country magazines by my competitors I have noticed that they do not put too much information about what is in the magazine on the front cover. I liked this idea as the image with the text would not be forgotten when the target audience look at the magazine. One example of a magazine with not much writing on the front is the magazine 'Country'. They use this techneque alot in their magazines as all the recent magazines they have produced latley seem to have most the information on the contents. Although country music magazines only focus on the main article and other details which can be found in the magazine I like the idea of filling the cover up a little more then just the main article. So I decided that the best thing to do was to use this technique but where appropriate add some other relevence to the other articles in the magazine, for example, use more plugs to tell the reader more about the magazine.

Masthead and Puff

Today I decided to focus on the masthead and the puff on the top of the page. I tryed out many different fonts and finally came accross a font I really liked and decided that it suited my idea of country music connotations and that I could try out different colour and techniques on this particular writing to make it more interesting for my masthead. As I was experimenting with different tools on photoshop I came across one particular tool which I thought was really fun to experiment with. I used the tool 'Wave' to make the masthead take up most of the room at the top of the page so it almost touches each side of the page.

I wanted to make the colour stand out more so I thought that maybe a shadow of the writing would make the overall effect of the masthead much more interesting. I tried to locate a tool that would enhance this idea, however I couldnt find any tools which would do what I wanted the text to do so I thought that maybe putting another layer of the same text in a different colour would emphasise the masthead a little more. I tried out some different colours that would look good and found a colour that matched the picture that I wanted to use as my front cover. I used this colour, which is a browny pink colour. This could also connote country music as when I asked my friends who were into country music which picture they would rather see on the front of a country music magazine and they said the colour is mostly what made them think it was more country then any other as it reminded them of the country hats that people wear so I thought that this masthead colour would be much better with this pinky colour and the black over the top.

I then focused on the puff which I decided to use a plain font but a black colour to emphasise the black in masthead. I tried to make it almost bold to stand out and draw attention to the reader without taking to much focus of the main articles that I will be putting on the page and will not distract the reader to much from the masthead so they know what the magazines name is.

Different pictures

Since my last update I have taken some more pictures for my front cover along with some pictures that could be useful for a double page spread and maybe the contents page. I still want to go with my original idea of using a country looking atmosphere with the colours of blue, black and white. However since taking the picture I realised that I acctually prefered using the background colour with some editing. I edited a few pictures to ask some of my friends who are in to country music and ask if they prefered a particular picture or would reccomend to continue using the colour scheme that I origanally set out to use. The results came back possitive that it would be a better idea to use the original background of the picture as it would seem 'more realistic' to the readers.

These are the pictures that I chose to edit:

These are the original pictures before being edited:

After doing the masthead and putting the picture of Lauren on the front cover I realised that the picture was breaking conventions, which is what I wanted but not in the way I would have liked. My idea so far is in the picture but I have decided to take some more pictures and edit them to see what I think of them.

I decided that the previous idea did not work out very well as I wanted to use a picture that I had taken of my friend Lauren but found that putting two of the pictures on the same page was something I didnt want to do. So I decided that I would try to edit in different ways and see if any of them made the cover look good or not. I was looking through the blur options and around the colour areas to see if I could make the cover seem more appealing to my target audience. Whilst looking through the colours on the right hand side of the screen I noticed that the picture can be edited into many variaties of colours and ways that would emphasis the picture. I chose to do a picture with a glow around the outline to make the picture emphasised but also to show that the person on the front cover is a new artist and using the glow around the outside of the picture could conote this to the audience.

Update

I have now started to do my magazine front cover. I have decided on a picture I want to use. It is a photograph which I have taken on my camera of one of my friends standing on a table with a guitar in a country style dress. I have decided to use this for my front cover because I think that I can do alot with it. I am thinking of maybe using two pictures which are similar and blending them together to create on picture which would be breaking conventions but I think would look different to the conventions which are used on almost every magazine. Also in my questionnaire I asked if people would prefer the general conventions of the magazine or something different and most of the responses that came back were that people into this kind of music would prefer to brake conventions.

Design Brief

Front Cover

My magazine will have a blue, silver and black colour scheme in the front cover and also in my contents page and double page spread.
The puff of my magazine will say 'The UK's number one selling country music magazine!'
The masthead of the magazine will be 'Lassoooo' and will be large font with black writing.
The picture on the front cover will be a picture of a female sitting on a swing with a blue background and silver dress.
The front cover will also show have a photo strip of other features in the magazine.
The barcode will be on the bottom right of the page and will have the amount of money it costs and issue number underneath it.
The plugs on the page will be written on the page without a border around it.

Contents Page

The contents page will have 4 small images of various bands accross the top with the word 'Contents' written with a large font and coloured black.
There will also be 4 more images where the contents finish with the same idea for the top part of the magazine.
All of the pictures on the contents page will be in black and white.
The text on the contents page will be saying what is going to be included in this particlar magazine.
There will be the same pictures on the frount cover in the photo strip as the one on the front cover.

Double Page Spread

My double page spread will be on an interview with Cleatus Williams.
The headline of the spread will be 'Cleatus Williams is a hit!'
The photograph will be an image similar to the one on the frount cover but a different way of posing.
One page will have a photo in the top left corner, which is the image similar to the one on the frount cover. and will have the interview around it and one large photo on the other page.
The magazine will be written lighthearted and gossipy.
The font size will be around 6/8 depending on how big the picture is.

Questionnaire Evaluation

Looking at the results from my servay questions I have decided to present the layout of my country music magazine with a puff saying 'The UK's top selling country music magazine'. I thought this sounded interesting as country music magazines are not as popular in England as they are in other countrys so I thought this puff would sound much more realistic and more local then just saying something like 'Top selling country magazine' or something similar. Althought this wasnt acctually a question in the survay I decided to add on another question about the puff. There was a choice of three different puffs, which include:

Which one of these would catch your attension the most?

"The UK's biggest selling music magzine"                                            5
"The UK's top selling country music magazine"                                   10
"The all time best selling country music magazine"                              5

As the most of the people who I asked the puff that stood out the most was the one I will use for my magazine. Also in the questionnaire I asked which name people would prefer the magazine to be named. I decided to give two options. One which was 'Rodeo' and the other 'Lassoo'. I thought these sounded good for a country music magazine because they have some kind of connection to the conventions of a music magazine, which could be something that people would assume country music singers would look like or do. The most common name was 'Lassoo' so I have decided to use this as my masthead. However when drawing up my design breif I realised that this could become a problem as the word is very short and if I was to enlarge the image of the masthead it would take up most of the magazine and would not fit in with any conventions that I want to use. So by fixing this problem I extended the word. Instead of using the correct spelling I used 'Lassoooo'. I thought that this would be suitable as it will make the magazine seem more personal to the audience and they will know that the magazine is not meant to be seen as sirious writing or pictures and other different conventions. I thought it would be really good to try out some different styles of font for the masthead and when thinking about it I made another blog entry with different suggestions of how to make the mastead and a variety of fonts. I am considering using the one that is written in the style of rope as it could be considered as some kind of conection to country music as 'country' makes me think that it would look like old western. Although making this connection is making me think that the first font style would be more appropriate in this case.

Another judgement I have made about my magazine is to make the colour scheme blue, black, and silver. Thinking about this I think that it may be hard to make all these the main colour scheme, however I thought that if I was to make the background already either blue or silver, this could be helpful as I can make the colour of the text black which would make the text stand out as well as the background. I thought that a natural background would be good to use in this case, for example, Maverick used a picture that had a blue background which was the beach as the water was blue and they had edited the main colour of the sand to make it appear almost a sliver colour. This is acctually where I got the idea to give the option of this colour scheme as I really liked the calm atmosphere the colours created. Also because the font/colour of the magazine is apparently important to my target audience as they rated it the highest convention they would look for to stand out in a music magazine, beating the main article photo and plug which came in joint second. I figured that the if my target audience were willing to pay up to £2.50 for a music magazine then I wouldnt make the magazine with to much expensive materials. For example I wouldnt use expenisive paper or really good quality paper as this would not be an important aspect of the magazine. With the mode of address I have decided to make it comedic and lightheaded as they both came in joint first in the results and my targert audience would be more likley to want this magazine if the context of the writing was in this state rather then sirious and straight foward informative. Using the results for my questionnaire I want to make the magazine have new and original ideas rather then following all the conventions of other magazines. Im not sure yet how I am going to do this as most of my ideas do follow the general conventions of a magazine, however I will when I update my blog explain some thoughts on how I could do this and still make my ideas new and original, maybe even by following the general conventions of the magazine.

6. Would a free gift enhance the chance of purchasing the magazine?


Yes 16
No 4