This is the third draft of my music magazine front cover. I have changed it significantly from my second draft after serious consideration of the colour used in it. I have also removed alot of the content from the front cover, as before it looked very cluttered, and now it has a much cleaner and professional look. I have still used red as a significant colour on the magazine to highlight the femininity of the image but i thought that eliminating the purple and green would make the magazine look alot more professional and highlight the colour palette of the image. Magazines usually adjust the colours of the magazine cover in accordance to the image and its colours.

Although initially i didnt want to use black and white, i changed my mind after realising that alot of the image is dominated by black and white that using it would be appropriate.

This is the mock up for my preliminary task contents page. the concept behind my design is clean and friendly. I often find that magazine contents pages are very intimidating and infact puts alot of readers off looking at them. having one that is clear and accompanied with an image is alot more enticing to the reader.I asked my peers if they agreed with this idea and they did. After showing a few of them my contents page mock up they thought that it would be a better approach to a contents page than current formats.
I would have a white background for the page, and then use the same font and colours for the school name as i have used on my prelim front page.
I used an advertisment to fill the bottom of the page as a way to make it more aesthetically pleasing. The advert would be related to a school product and this would be more beneficial to the reader rather than something that isnt relevant to school.

This is the second draft of my music magazine front cover. As you can see it has changed dramatically from my first draft. the colours used on my magazine cover are very significant to the message that is being portrayed. If you look at the magazine, the most eye catching colour is red, but this is associated with the background to the text used. The only other place red is used is on the lips of the girl in the image. i wanted to highlight her lips to place significance on her femininity, as in the trance music industry girls are a huge minority. I dont need to say "This is a girl who's made it big in the trance industry", when firstly she's already on the magazine, but instead highlight the feminine features of her instead, and place importance on it.
Red is the perfect colour for this as it has so many different associations in symbology. aggresssion, love, passion, fire etc. are all important messages that are conveyed in this magazine, using just that colour.
I used purple and green alot on my magazine to match with the masthead, to reflect the topic that it is writing about. As mentioned in my last post, purple and green are commonly used colours in this industry.
I tried to keep the font variation to a minimum on my magazine, as i think that using too many makes it look unprofessional. however, i felt the need to use three was appropriate. I would have kept it as two, but i decided that the top of the magazine that advertises the contents of the magazine should have a different font, to place importance on what is being included in the magazine and then entice the reader to buy it.
I was inspired by DJ mag to use the text on a slant as opposed to horizontal, as trance is a deviation from normal music genres, and the best way to show deviation is through a literal "different angle."
the red backgrounds to the puffs on the cover are angled, rather than curved - this is to express the message that the magazine is "cutting edge", so the reader knows that it is modern.

The decisions i have made would attract the target audience, which i think would be a 16-35 age range. anyone over 35 is unlikely to be visiting clubs as much anymore and so trying to appeal to over 35's would mean losing the message of the magazine.
Please post comments on my magazine, suggestions, problems, successes or any other posts would be highly appreciated. Thanks!
I hope to upload my next draft after some feedback.

Magazine cover first draft

This is the first draft of my magazine cover. Rather than an attempt to throw myself into creating a magazine cover in one go, i wanted to put the magazine title and a conceptual mast head and puff on there to see what it would look like. I also added a barcode, just for conceptual design at the moment. The use of black as a background is useful for more colourful texts with this magazine (a trance magazine) as the colours used in the text are associated with lights used in dance/trance clubs. the white was used more as just a simple background to the text so i could focus on the design of the boxes behind the text, it is not the colour i intend to keep in my final coursework piece.

The magaazine i have chosen to analyse is a DJ magazine. This is similar to the magazine i wish to create for my main task. Looking at the magazine there are several features that are used to entice readers into buying it. DJ magazines usually have a very exclusive audience, so trying to expand the market is a difficult task. Clearly, DJmags have tried to keep their magazine contemporary and imitate the styles of Q magazine and Rolling Stone. They deviate from normal magazines however by consistently using a slanted font, to try and express the style of music that they are associated with. Trance and Electronica magazines would probably have a similar style to this type of magazine. DJmag also conforms to many standards of magazines by using only two or three fonts. using too many different fonts makes the magazine look unprofessional, but DJmag conforms to these standards and it succeeds because of this.

These are the basic ideas for the title of my music magazine. I have looked at several different text styles and colours to try and find an appropriate text.

As I have looked into this more, I found that whilst some of the texts were never going to be used, some had the potential. I cut my list down to three, as can be seen below:

The three I chose here I thought stood out the most as appropriate magazine name titles.

I also decided to merge the colours as purple and green work well together and they reflect the style of magazine I wish to design. The final design shows that I only reinforced what I want the magazine to be about: I included a hand over the "o" to represent a DJ spinning a vinyl, which is reflective of the type of magazine i am making.
My final design for my title is reflective of the style of magazine which i wish to do. The purple, green, black outline and the hand on the O makes it seem busy but not over the top. I think that making an electronica magazine with this name and design will be effective.
If anyone has any suggestions to change the design or feels that it might work better with something else, please comment, thanks!

This is the fourth draft of my preliminary task. I am unlikely to make many changes to this magazine cover as i feel that adding much more would make it cluttered and lose its professional

look. I have transferred my image to photoshop and as such i have made the image more aesthetically pleasing. I rounded off the edges of the text boxes to make it cleaner and more approachable as a magazine to pick up. I removed the "Congratulations" from the red explosion and put it behind the masthead to amplify what the mastheads message is. I thought that the "Congratulations" made the front cover less professional and clean.