My Final Music Magazine

Research and Planning: Re-adjustment of cover

After going through the final tweaks before my evaluation, I noticed a few features of a metal genre magazine that I have missed in my research.

The first one was a banner above the masthead. This acts as another cover line which breaks the top of the page from the masthead making it more dominant. it allows more space to elaborate on stories and contents that the reader will be interested in, that are included in the magazine therefore influencing the reader even more that the magazine is jam packed with great content. This is why I changed the cover to add a banner.

These are a few examples from metal hammer and Kerrang.

I also noticed in every magazine that the cover lines included around the model do not cover the face of the model as the face of the artist is seen as a major feature therefore covering the face with cover lines
will exceed the point of the models image being there.

For example:













As you can see, the faces have cover lines surrounding them but not covering them therefore this encouraged me to slim my cover lines so they aren't placed over my model. This allows the model's face to pop out more and make it look as if the magazine is moulded around the model.

Looking at the masthead, I gave notice to the fact that the masthead wasn't very dominant. It is big and bold which gave it a good presence however your eyes are not drawn to it. Therefore, I then added a background to the title with a contrasting and strong colour such as black drawing your eyes to the top of the page. As the drop shadow of the masthead is black, I therefore changed the colour to white to contrast the shadow against the black background. However, A pure black background was boring therefore I cut a triangle/arrow into the rectangle pointing down into the main cover which acts as a direction to point the audience where to find the best information.

With the arrow feature in mind, I couldn't use red, black or white to fill it in as any of them colours would blend the other colours used in the masthead or rectangle. This then gave me the opportunity to break my 3 colour scheme into a 4 colour scheme. I did this because a 3 colour scheme can appear to be boring and samey. Every where you look is either red, black and grey and nothing to break the sequence. When cycling through the colours, I noticed a bright yellow worked very well with the dark colours expressed on the cover of the magazine. The yellow wouldn't just work with the masthead however as it would look out of place. Therefore, I looked to change the bottom part as well by applying the colour to the PLUS line. Further more, It will then add symmetry with the cover and the colours.

Research and Planning: Social feedback on competition prize

The message below is from a friend who shares the same metal music enthusiasm as me therefore I asked him whether the competition prize I am offering in my music magazine is suitable for such a fan as I want people to enter and they will only do so if they prize is influencing. 

 

His response was pleasing as he says that the competition I am offering would be a "dream" for a metal fan such as my friend. This was the sort of response I wanted as my friend is in the required target audience and he thinks it is "top quality". I am therefore convinced to continue with this prize. 

Research and Planning: Contents update

Before evaluation, I have altered my contents page slightly with a few tweaks. The first tweak is the masthead title, as I thought it was placed a little too close to the border of the page therefore I removed the ellipses at the end and made the font size bigger to stand out more without the title being too close to the edge of the page. 

The second tweak is in the competition story. The first paragraph was aligned on the left hand-side of the text box which didn't look accurate as one sentence was too long and slight merged with the second paragraph. Therefore by centring the text, the gap between the two paragraphs is more clear. 

Research and Planning: Double page spread update

My double page spread has undergone a couple of little tweaks. The first amendment was a grammar error in the sub-heading sentence below the main graphic on the right side page. I added a full stop in the sentence after the word "work", as the sentence contained a comer which didn't suit the sentence. 

I also moved the left and right text column in the story a touch closer together to the middle column as the right column was too close to the background edge and the left column was too close to the left page image therefore moving them allowed the story to look more practical while leaving enough space around the middle column to see the synapses.  

Research and Planning: tattoo makeover

When I was making my final tweaks to my cover design. It occurred to me that I had forgotten to add tattoos during my model make-over process. I believe to have forgotten this feature when my teacher had told me that I could not use internet images therefore my past blogs which included internet pictures were all scrapped, including the tattoo designs I originally created.

However, I found that brusheasy, a website I use to download stamps also included tattoo stamps therefore I realised I could continue with the tattoo project. After downloading a couple tattoo stamp examples to Photoshop, I worked quickly to implement them onto my cover and double page spread model. The finished look are on the images located above.

My model is wearing a jumper therefore I only had a little wrist and hand space left and hand tattoos rarely seen. By placing the tattoos at the wrist section, it creates the impression my model has a full sleeve tattoo. A full sleeve is more of a hard-core tattoo as it takes several weeks of money and pain to eventually get a good one. So, if an artist is seen with a sleeve tattoo, people can see money and pain means nothing to them and a metal artist would like to be associated of such "bad-ass" trades.