Chloë Hatton AS Media Studies Blog: 2012

^^^^ My Initial Music Magazine Front Cover Idea. The First Draft I made. I used my research, music magazines and hand drawn, electronic and digital mock-ups to create this initial idea. I used this to expand my ideas in order to make my music magazine the best I possibly could. I took the positives and negatives of this draft in orderto work towards the production of my final draft.

^^^^Original Idea, starting to shape the style of my front cover and set a theme.

Started to build on using conventional features of a music magazine in order to make it look proffessional. Looked through reasearch of Front Page's of magazines to help get inspiration on how to style and make my front cover effective. Using conventions such as Splashes, Skylines, Band Index, bold Masthead, dateline, issue number, barcode, website, Main Feature, Sell line and kickers. I decided to include freebes and highlight my price in order to attract an audiences attention to the good points about my music magazine in order to persyuade themm to buy it. I used an image looking dirrectly at the audience to make it eye catching/attention grabbing, placed it in the centre of the page as its conventional and made it large enough to dominante the page so its grabs an audiences attention promptly and instantly - allowing an audience to instantly see who features in the music magazine. I set a theme by using the house styles of Bold Red, Orange and Bright Yellow along with similar fonts throughout such as Rockwell and Stencil. I used these fonts as I felt they worked well together, suited the image, where clear to read, bold enough to capture attention/make a statement and gave of the sence of strength and manliness setting the theme of the front cover and complementing the artist by giving of positive connotations. I chose to use the colour red as its the most eye catching colour to to human eye, its bold, connotates the sence of urgency to buy the product and is effectivly used on other magazines like NME and Q. I used the colours yellow and orange as they complement each other, are bright, bold and stand out thus drawing an audiences attention towrds the front cover. I used a Quote as its conventional, its a kickers, leaving the audience shocked with unanswered questions and wanting to read on to find out more. I used the main feature as anchorage to grab the audiences attention. I displayed the main feature in bold yellow writing to make it stand out and made the Artists name larger as its conventional. I used a shadow effect behind the artists name to make it stand out from its background, bold and clearIy readable. used the blocking box colours behind the sell line, band index and skyline to draw attention to there importance and to make them as clear, bold and eye catching as possible. I also saw this used effectivly and conventionally on Front Covers whos main feature was a male artist. I started to create a bar code myself including a website and date of the issue and followed the conventions and structure of barcodes used on other successful magazine companies on order to make my magazine realistic and believable.

^^^^I experimented with getting rid of the block black and white colours behind the skyline and Artists list. I felt this made it have a more classy feel, however its hard to read the writing and the bold colours made these elements stand out more. I made my headline a larger font to make it as bold and eye catching as possible with headlines being conventionally large and bold. I moved the image slightly to the left to make the sell line clearer and to allow for a left third of smaller features whilst still keeping the image as the dominant focus, catching an audiences eye. between the date line and issue number I changed it from a comma to a line as this looks more proffestional, defined and classy with many magazines conventionally using this.

^^^^I replaced the block black and white colours behind the skyline and artist list as I felt this made my magazine stand out more dominantly, making it clear and I also felt this fitted with the style of the image and these types of blocking are conventionally used on music magazines with male artists/models on there front cover. I moved the headline downwards to allow for the placing of featuires down the left third.I added a new splash with freebes and exclisive infoormation included to entice an audience into wanting to buy this music magazine. I placed the 'Revealed' next to the splash with a block black colour behind it to complement the blocking style and theme used on the band index, skyline and selline, making it stand out and bold. I chose to do this to emphasis the fact this is exclusive, one off informatiomn only available in this magazine.

^^^^I added conentional features down the side of the left third on one on the right hand side of the page to balence the design out. I used colours and fonts that fitted and complemented the house style and theme of the front cover - red, orange and rockwell. I alternated the colours of each feature to make them clearly sefined and separated and easy for the audiences eye to read and understand. I used common youth friendly slang such as '@' , 'fest' and 'ripped' to make my magazine relevent, attractive and understandable to my young 16-25 target audience (also as found from my focus group). I used kickers, anchorage, retorical questions and quotes to grab and withold the audiences attention, shock them, leave them with unanswered questions leaving them wanting to by the magazine/read on to find out more. These are also coventionally used to effect on the front page of music magazines. I made my features short and snappy to make them straight to the point so they grab the audiences attention rather than putting them off with too many words. I made the focus of each feature larger than its explanation as its conventional and draws an audience's focus to the main points of the magazine's features. I experimented with changing the colour of the 2nd Splash around so the base was yellow with red writing in order for it to link and complement the first splash and to make them it as clear, bold, noticable and defined as possible. I moved the main feature down to allow for clearer, more noticable features down the left third however I wanted to keep the font size as large to maintain its eye catching, dominant apearence. I moved 'The new born music Legend..' to the left to make it more obvious to as audience reading in as they read from left to right. I added an elipses to make a feel like a more important introduction. I added shadow and white colour around the edges of all the main feature writing to make them stand out from the background, making the more bold and easily readable and eye catchingly noticable to an audience. I slanted the revealed siign to give it a more of the edge/ modern/ indie feel which I felt suited the image, theme and brand.

^^^^I changed the Font of the bold skyline words '24 FREE TUNES' to Calibri as I felt this font worked better that the Rockwell font as it clashed with the font of the masthead and distracted attention away from it. I also felt the Calibri font was more eye-catching, bold and clearer to read on the black background. I placed lines between the features to make them more clearer, define and easier for an audience to read. I used black bold lines to complement the blocking theme and made them slope rugidly to add to the of the edge, indie pop feel, complemnting the artist image. I changed the colour of the headline artists name 'DANNY MANSON' as I wanted to draw attention to this section as its important and red is the most eye-catching colour that instantly draws the eyes attention towards it, this colour is also conventionsally used in music magazines. I kept the colour of the rest of the headline yellow as I felt the colours complemented each other and allowed the headline to be more defined, attention grabbing and readable by breaking it up with colour. Its also conventional on music magazines to break a healine up with colour in this was. I slanted the headline words 'The New Born Indie Pop Lengend' as I felt this created a more classy, eye catching introduction. I changed the colours of the features so that they worked with the house styles but shifted the focus onto the main headline as its the most important. I added shadow effects onto each of the features to enable them to stand out from the background, making them clearer to read and its as if they almost jump off the page into the audiences sights/eyes. I kept the masthead/brand name orange as I wanted to make my magazine stand out from the crowed with a bright colour that was different to those red colour used on magazines like Q and NME, making it stand out for being unique. However I changed the shadow background to a red colour as this made the masthead more bold and noticable as if its standing of the page, drawing attention directly too it. I changed the font of the smaller writing under the smaller features as this is conentional of music magazines and this complemented the theme, making the structure of them clear to read and well defined.

^^^^I added an extra break line onto the bottom of the last smaller feature to complete and add to the defining idea, making each feature clear, noticable and readable. I added more artists to my 'PLUS' Artist index in order to make my music magazine apeal to a larger target audience aswell as making it seem more cram packed full off of gossip - this would help my magazine to compete well against top music magazines like NME, Q, Spin and Billboard. I experimented with changing the background colour of my Artists Index to grey to complement the theme and background and to make the music magazine a more clearer colour than the mucky white. I made the barcode a larger size as its a conventional size of barcodes on music magazines. I made the price, website address and date on the barcode a larger font size and bolder to make them easier to notice and read for an audience and for historical referance. I changed the web address to an orange colour to suit the brand name and theme, making it stand out from the black writing, this is conventional on music magazine barcodes too. I added deeper shadow effects to the smaller features to make them stand out more from the background so there clear and easy to read. I slanted the price in the splash to give it a more of the edge, stylish feel and to complement the slant used on the 'Revealed'. I altered the headline by making the words 'DANNY MANSON' have a white edging aswell as a shadow making it as bold and eye-catching as possible and I incresed the size of the quote to make it more readable and eye-catching along with increaing the size of the black shadow around it in order to make it stand out from its background rather thsn just blending in. I also added a yellow block colour behind 'The New Indie-Pop Legend' writing as this complemented the house styles and blocking theme, suited the strength and manliness of the theme and image awwell as dramatically making these works more eye-catching, readable, defined, clear and hard not to notice. I also edited the picture by changing the saturation, colour balence and exposure in order to smooth out imperfections and to make the image more dominant, eye catching and stand out. I also did this to make the image look more professional amnd perfect, as predominantly used on images in magazines, this helps make my model look more stereotypically attractive and good looking in order to attract my audiences attention into buying my music magazine. I made the masthead a slightly lsarger font to make it as dominant and clear as possible, whilst keeping it coventionally placed in the top left hand corner of the page.

^^^^I tried experimenting with changing the image but I felt this particular one clashed and didn't work with the rest of the Front Cover along with it being of rather bad quality.

^^^^I changed the background of the artist index to orange as it suited the style of the magazine and the house colours more, making it stand out. I added shadow effects behind the majority of the writing so that they stand off the page and are easier to read, making them more noticeable. I edited the photo to make it more professional, perfected, airbrushed and attractive. I added a shadow behind it to make it believable the photo was taken in front of the screen and to make it stand of the page and attract an audience’s attention. I made the eyes bigger, brighter and more noticeable - making them looks more attractive, eye-catching and dominant thus drawing an audience’s attention in. I added more of a red colour to the lips to make them more defined, noticeable and luscious. I added a red colour to the hood to complement the house colours. I even out the edges of the image with a faded eraser tool to make the image more believable and not just placed onto the page. I used the clone stamp to add more whiskers to my models beard to make him look manly and of the edge. I used the spot healing brush tool to remove spots and marks to perfect the skin. I used a linear dodge effect to make the jumper more prominent, bold and defined, also fitting it in with the house colours. I moved the word 'PLUS' so it and the artists names could be clearly and fully seen and also be in proportion.

^^^^The most predominant thing I altered on this draft is the image itself. I edited it in Photoshop as I wanted to make it as professional looking, dominant, bold, effective, relative to the house colours and eye-catching as I possibly could. I added block colour overlays by quick selecting the hat, hood lining separately and lowering the opacity to make them more real, natural and believable. I did this in order to make the image colours tie in and complement the house colours predominantly. I used a linear burn on the jumper with a lower opacity to make the colour more dominant and relevant to the house colours. I changed the position of the shadow and used fade and blur effects along with fading its opacity to make it a more believable shadow in order to make it more real as if my model is actually there. I used the blur, healing brush, spot healing brush and clone stamp tools to edit imperfections out of the skin to make it look more pristine and perfect. I edited the eyes in Photoshop instead of putting an eye image over them as this looked fake and unbelievable. I carefully used the bloat and pucker tools in liquidify to make the eyes bigger and more open as they were slightly squirted in the original image. I zoomed into the eyes so I could use the Ellipse tool to follow the exact circle outline shapes within the eyes. I used two on each eyes, one for each pupil and one for the colour of each eye. For the outer colour of the eyes I used the blending options to select a natural, pretty blue overlay and lowered the opacity to make it natural and believable. I did the same with the pupils with a black overlay. This made the eyes more dominant and pretty, making it look like my model is staring out at the audience in order to draw their attention towards my magazine. I also zoomed in on the edges of the image and used a soft fading eraser to even out the edges to make them more pristine, defined, soft, believable and perfect. I changed the position of the shadows on the magazine in general and I felt this looked better, more defined and dominant - as if the magazine is jumping out on the audience to grab their attention into buying the magazine. I experimented with removing the line from the second splash as I felt it looked more bobble like/Christmas like and clashed with my magazines style. I also used the brush tool to carefully add colour in places that auto select had missed in order to make it perfect and realistic.

^^^^The most prominent thing I changed in this draft was the colour scheme. I felt the orange was the most dull colour out of the 3 and was lowering the vibrance. I therefore changed the house colours by replacing the orange with a bright, bold blue colour in order to make my Front Cover ad Eye-Catching as possible. I increased the shadow effects on some of the writing to make them stand out clearly from the background as much as possible. Whilst adding a white outer glow from blending options on the blue writing as it proved the most effective in making it clear, bold, noticeable and stand out from its background. I therefore changed the Masthead Colours too. As red is the most eye-catching, dominant colour to the human eye and is conventionally used on other similar magazine such as NME and Q, I chose to use this as the base colour of my masthead/brand name, which proved effective in making it bold eye-catching and stand out. However I wanted to make my magazine Front Cover dominant and stand out from the crowd (other magazines) so I chose a bold blue colour which isn't used on any competition magazines to sit behind to red in a shadow effect. This colour also made it more prominent and stand out more than the yellow and orange colours. I also made the shadow effect on the masthead larger and more faded as I felt this fitted with the style of the front cover more. I alternated the colours on the second splash as its more conventional. I edited the colours of text and backgrounds so they fitted the house styles and colours and also complemented each other. I changed some colours around so that they complemented each other and stood out as much as possible without clashing. I changed the artist index background to yellow which made the red writing stand out more, complemented the blocking theme, complementing the yellow background behind the introduction to the main headline. The yellow colour worked better than the orange colour overall at making the artist index stand out and complement the theme. The bright blue also mostly worked better than the orange colour as its a dominant eye catching primary colour which complements and contrasts the other house colours in an effective way.

^^^^I experimented with changing the image but I felt it clashed and didn't work with the style and concept of the Front Cover. I edited the image in photoshop by using auto select and different quality eraser tools to remove the main image from its background. I then used blending options to change and experiment with the quality of the image to make it look more perfect and professional along with using the spot healing tools to get rid of imperfections from the skin.

^^^^I moved around the features and block black line shapes between them around in order to make them more evenly spread, neat, professional and in correct proportions. I changed the faded opacity colour overlay on the hat from orange tinted to yellow tinted so it fitted and complemented with the house colours and styles. I added more shadow effects and outlines onto the masthead/brand name in order to make it more prominent, bold and stand out so it catches the audience’s eyes straight away. I changed the 'PLUS word to blue so it stood out from the artist names, making the artist index more defined, eye catching and clear. I moved the artist names around and alter there positioning and sizing to make them fit as professionally and neatly inside the box as possible in order to make it a believable Front Cover. I edited the font on the words 'This Week ONLY' in the first splash to make them fit with the house styles more, stand out and draw attention towards the £1.50 which is the main point of this splash. I changed the '£1.50' to a red colour as it’s the most prominent colour to the human eye in order to draw audience’s attention towards the cheap price, also helping it link with the colours of the masthead/ brand name. I changed the second splash by adding the actual 'V-Fest' logo to it in order to draw attention to the point of the splash and make it look more believable and professional - as this is what other real music magazines do. I also changed the second splashes font colour to black and style to Rockwell as I felt it complemented the style of the 'V-Fest' colours/font and helped it be noticeable and stand out from the surrounding colours and fonts.

^^^^I made the writing font on the second splash a larger font so that it dominated the splash and was as clear and eye-catching as possible. I changed the additional description under the main point f the 4 features to the same font so that they all fitted the same house styles/theme and looked like they belonged together - it order to make my Front Cover look as attractive to the eye as possible. I moved the 'PLUS' word on the Artist Index so that it was as centred, defined and clear as possible in order to make my Front Cover professional and believable. I altered the sizing of text, fonts (slightly larger) and positioning on the list of Artists so that they were evenly spaced out and attention was drawn to the most famous artist in order to capture my audience’s attention into buying my magazine. I felt this made it look more professional as it conventional of other music magazines of my genre. I altered the text/writing on my barcode by making them larger and more spaced out to make them as clear and music magazine like as possible. I kept the text relatively smaller than the rest of writing on this Front Cover as its conventional and keeps the audience’s attention and eyes focused on the main attractive points of the Front Cover like the headlines/features, artist and brand name/masthead. I altered the web address on the barcode to a red colour so that it fitted and complemented the house colours of this magazine and reflected brand name, instantly making it appear relevant to the brand. I made the 'HIP' word itself in the web address more clear and dominant by adding a blue colour around the edge like in the masthead/brand name and making it bolder and a large Font. I did this as its conventionally used on barcodes in music magazines, to emphasis the brand reinforcing to the audience the brand that brought them this magazine and I to clearly link it to the Brand name by the colours used, also making it easier for an audience to remember the web address. I changed the Full Stop positioning as despite liking its dominant, clear cut effect it looked out of place as it was too far away from the main masthead itself. I therefore made the full stop in a separate layer, made it a size and colour the fitted with the masthead and moved it colour towards the words 'HIP' in order to make it look more relevant, part of the masthead and not just out of place. I also edited the shadow so it was more faint and wide as I felt this made it look more real and believable(as if hes really there) also making the photo apear more dominant. I felt this made it look more professional, like a real conventional magazine.

^^^^I changed this Font Cover slightly to make it more professional and perfect. I moved the V-Fest logo further towards the right to make it more centred, balanced and professional looking. I also changed the writing on some of the additional information under the smaller features in order to make them all the same so that they all fit the same house styles and theme. I made theme a similar fonts but thinner that the main point of the feature above it as this is conventional of music magazines, helps to define and differentiate the features and creates an attractive looking magazine as the styles complement each other.

^^^^I experimented with editing the background by making it a darker base colour to see how it would alter the quality of my front cover Draft. I did this as I felt it complemented the house styles and made the bright colours stand out even more from the page, making it more eye-catching to the audience. I also felt it complemented the models style and gave the draft an overal classy feel. However I still feel the previous Draft's lighter background complemented the front covers layout, design and colours better as it contrasted better with the colour of the Artists clothes and the house styles/colours which meant the colours stood of the page more and where more eye-catching and it also gave the draft an overall edgy, fresh feel which complements my music magazines new modern/indie pop genre well. Overall the draker background makes the front cover look slightly dull and not that noticable wheras the lighter background make the front cover more noticable and stand out from the page - suiting the music magazine/artists edgy, fresh and modern style too.