Front page construction

My first draft and design My first initial idea was the Buzz which followed the same basis as my final design as a multi cultural and wide variety music magazine. As I discovered in my preliminary task my ICT skill were lacking to quite a degree meaning that I had trouble with photo shopping and selecting a particular features of images and removing backgrounds.

This first design/ draft was done on publisher which a software I know vaguely but not enough to the degree I needed to create what I wanted. After a few short sessions I began to pick up the basics of the software but was introduced by a fellow peer to a software called comic life which provided a much more basic and specific tools I needed to create my cover.

After finding the comic life software I decided I wanted to redo my magazine I feel that I will reflect greater ICT skills using a software with a much more basic base to eventually build upon to create what I wanted to achieve. Also the software allowed me to easy outline various parts of an image I wanted to stand out and also allow me to turn them back and white to look historic.

My final plan When deciding what magazine cover I wanted to aspire I chose to base my ideas similar to uncut magazine. Uncut is a magazine with a broad spectrum of styles from rock, pop, jazz, folk and even Jamaican roots music. Uncut offers a complete range of music styles and choices for someone that takes a general and in depth interest in the world of music from business to the latest news and music produced by the artists today and in the past.

For my final design I chose to re design the title of the magazine as I felt that the buzz was not up to the standard and personally felt out of place when I looked twice at my initial design. I renamed my magazine vinyl days to follow the theme I wanted to include in the articles and features of the front page that would attract my target audience.

My masthead has a particular retro theme that would suggest a 50’s/ 60’s impression which I feel was affective to grab the attention of the target readers. The colour chosen for the masthead was a black with a faint white outline in order to stand out from the black and white photo shopped background. The title contrasts really well with the background and brings out a very classic theme that I was hoping to achieve.

Masthead

Background

For my final design I thought that I would contrast 4 images on the band featured in my main article together in one image using the photo shopping skills I had developed. It was all successful and I managed to create what I wanted with the chosen with my chosen images.

The pictures features are all with the members of the band playing there instruments live on stage overlapping each other in areas of the magazine. The software comic life let me change the colour of the image so I could have a black and white photo after I contrasted all the images into one. I also learned how to put a fait shadow on the edges of the image to make it stand out more on the front cover of the magazine.

Other features Layout

When deciding a layout for my magazine based on the results from my questionnaire more people preferred the Minimalist layout which was more basic with big eye catching images of the following articles. I followed this style and showed promising results as the images stood out and became eye catching to the particular audience it would appeal to. I feel that with less detail on the front would give a reader more incentive to look inside the magazine and see for them selves what the magazine will offer to them. So personally I feel that the minimalist layout worked well.

BarcodeThe barcode on my final design was located in the same area as my first draft, in the bottom right of the magazine. I wanted the barcode to be lees exposed and not interrupting any features on the magazine I wished to grab the readers attention with. At the bottom of he page it is still exposed but it doesn’t interrupt any eye catching features such as the title or main image.

Articles My original design had all the articles on the right third of the page, and traditionally when magazines are stacked on shelves the left third is the most exposed part of the magazine. Therefore, I decided that I would put all articles on the left third to gain maximum exposure.