Photo's for Contents page and Double page spread

Photo ideas for main Cover

A plan of your own music magazine

Layout / structure- For they layout of my magazine, I want the main image to take up the whole page and the coverline’s around the edge of the magazine to be pull quotes and for the magazine to have a tagline at the top of the magazine to make it easily recognisable.

Name of magazine and font for masthead- The name of the magazine I went for was ‘Smash Resistance’ because the name is kinda like a contradiction- because resistance is against something and fighting against something, but to smash it is like breaking the resistance- and I thought it was an ideal name for a Rock genre magazine, because they are always breaking the boundaries in music.
The font for the mast head I used was

I thought the font style for the magazine, was rather good, because the style of it looks like it’s been smashed/broken up so it fits in well with the title of ‘Smash Resistance’.

The main cover line I wanted to use wasRead our exclusive interview with Britain’s dangerous new double act.

For my magazine I wanted to use 2 people to have a ‘band’ for my magazine, I wanted the artists to be a heavy rock duo with attitude, so for their outfits I gave them leather jackets and for Adam- I dressed him in a black shirt, green tie, leather jacket and jeans. And for Harriet- I dressed her in a blazer jacket, T Shirt and stone washed jeans.
And for both of them, we gave them a heavy make over-
For Adam- We gave him an almost Ziggy Stardust eye make up to give him a more dangerous and rocky look and for Harriet we gave her eccentric colours around her eyes to look like a sunburst.
I let Harriet have an ‘indirect’ mode of address she is looking away from the camera and holding her hand up to the camera and through the gaps in her fingers we can see Adam giving a direct mode of address to the camera, giving eye contact to us- as though he doesn’t fear anything, I also put an unlit cigarette in his mouth, to add to the ‘rocky’ and ‘devil may care’ look.

Features- I wanted the front cover to feature a lot of cover lines so I wanted to use a lot of ‘Pull Quotes’ because my main feature will be an interview with the band, so I want direct quotes from the interview to use on the cover of the magazine.

Positioning of conventional information- I wanted the price to be in the top right corner and for the issue number and date to be right in the top right, and in a smaller font, so people know it’s there but it’s not a main focus point.
Colour Scheme- for the colour scheme, I wanted to keep it simple and since the genre of my magazine is rock and the typical connotations of rock are the colours, black, red and white. So I wanted to use these across my main cover, contents page and double page spread.

Analysis of an existing magazine cover.

On the cover of this magazine, the lighting that is used defines the main characters facial features, the shadows clearly show the creases around his mouth and around his eye- this is to represent the style of music that Coldplay is, the lighting is used to make it look quite dark- so that shows that Coldplay is quite a dark cool band.

The camera angle that is used is a medium close up which is capturing the emotions of the main character we can clearly see that he is looking quite…excited. His facial expression looks like he is eager to get a word in and contribute. Although his eyes are nearly closed he is giving us a direct mode of address to engage with the audience. With his mouth wide open, it looks like he is a quite loud person, with a lot to say- with the added cover lines around the edge, makes it look like he does say a lot.
His face is slightly tilted giving him the impression that he is superior to us and is looking down upon us, and that we should listen to every word he says- because he is important.

The word ‘Coldplay’ is stretched across the page and across his face, looking like he is shouting the word ‘Coldplay’- It is very effective because it starts of small and gets bigger across the page.

The target audience for this magazine would be 16-25 year olds due to the cover lines around the edge of the page, which would appeal to a young target audience. “I lost my virginity 2 years ago.” “We’re not Travis OK?” because young people will be able to relate to these, as well as knowing who ‘Travis’ is.

The layout of the page is very consistent; the colour scheme is a light green yellowy colour- creating a calming effect. The cover lines are all written in the same colour and font style, maintaining regularity.

Planning the photoshoot- I decided to do the iconic Lily Allen and the panther main image from Q magazine and I used my friend to re enact this front cover magazine.
For the scene we used a room which had a white wall and we kept the lights on so to make it seem abit brighter but we kept the flash off the camera. Unfortunatly we didn't have 2 panther's to spare, so we decided to just not include these in the image.
I tried to copy Lily Allen's pose as much as possible so I asked my cover girl to turn and look a certain way.
We tried to match the outfit as much as we could, we got some black leggings and we just used some black short shorts and obviously a top was not necessary for the shoot.
We took about 3 pictures but when we looked at them all we deleted the other 2 and went with this one, as it looked abit more like the original.

Once on the computer I used a software on my laptop called 'Photosuite' and I used that just to alter the background because the original magazine cover, the background is a very light grey, to add dark tones to the image. So I manipulated the image slightly to make the background a light grey/silvery colour.
I then transported the image onto Word 2007- where I added the coverlines and the headings around the image, I recreated the 'Q' Logo- to the best that I could. I stuck to the same colours and similar font styles and sizes for the coverlines and the banner at the bottom.

Looking back on it, I don't think the image itself is terrible but I think it could've done with more work especially on the coverlines- The coverlines were not as bold and close together as the original cover. And without the 2 panther's my version looked a little bit lost, like something was missing from it. If I had a proper image maniuplating program, like photoshop, I might have been able to cut the 2 panthers out of the original magazine and place them on my magazine cover. The main title of 'Lily Allen'- I should've made that stretch across the page and be alot more bolder.But overall I think that the outcome of my recreation of this magazine was satisfactory. But it could've used abit more image manipulation.

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