Representation
In my magazine I represent rock music fans. I have tried to show that through pictures, colours and layout. Using photographs I have shown what kind of clothes they wear, what kind of gigs they are attending and how they look like. By looking at these photographs we can notice that the majority of people are young people especially in the picture of the crowd at the concert. I wanted to represent social group similar to my age, however it doesn't mean that older people are not rock music fans. Unlike my magazine, Rolling Stone (rock magazine) is trying to represent every rock fan without considering the age. Except the age of the social group I did not focus on any particular ethnic groups, therefore I think that my magazine will be suitable for males and females and all ethnic groups as long as they like rock and metal music.
In my magazine, the black colour is domineering because it is the most popular colour in rock social group therefore I thought that this colour will successfully represent the social group that I have chosen.
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Institution
As my magazine is mainly targeted at young audience, the best place to distribute the magazine is of course college or school.
I think that the company that might distribute my magazine would be a small independent distribution company such as Campus Connect Inc.
Campus Connect Inc has been delivering magazines and putting up posters to the college market since 1997. The company’s president, Eric Tiettmeyer, started Student Traveler Magazine out of his dorm room at UC Irvine in Southern California. Student Traveler was hand delivered to college campuses throughout Southern California — to save the high cost of postage and to make sure every copy was picked up.
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In order to design a magazine front cover and a double page spread, I had to do a research on some professional magazines. The forms and conventions I have looked at:
- layout
- style and form of writing
- colours
- type of pictures
- the most popular topics
I was working on Apple iMac and I was using Adobe Photoshop Elements in order to design and produce my front cover and double page spread, however before I have started to design it, I had to have my own photographs and therefore I have used a camera to take some photographs.
Magazine is about researching, planning and putting things into the right places. From the first minute of producing a magazine I had to be creative because i had to decide on layout and pictures and what goes where in order for the front cover to be attractive. the choice of colours also gave me the chance to be creative because if colours are not well chosen they will not work well together, therefore I had to chose suitable colours in order to make the magazine enjoyable to read.
Wednesday 24 June 2009
Wednesday 17 June 2009
Comparison-Double Page Spread
This is the most similar double page spread from the real magazine comparing to my own one.
It has black background and white font and a picture of a guitarist playing on the guitar.
They decided to use black as the dominant colour which I did as well however they also use red for the heading. Black and red are the most popular colours in this social group and should've use red as well and this is what I would change if I could.
Tuesday 24 March 2009
Evaluation
Magazine Evaluation
I have tried to put a lot of effort into the project because I wanted my double page spread and of course the front cover, to look professional and have similar forms and conventions of real magazine. This was my aim. I ended up with conclusion that the most effective way to convince the readers is the well chosen layout, use of colours and nice, big image that will appeal to particular social group. If these forms are well combined together, the front cover and the rest of the magazine starts to look professional even if it is designed by amateur. In real magazine, the layout is clear, the colors are not too bright and not too dark therefore it makes the reader to actually buy and read the magazine. In my opinion, I have included theses forms and conventions to my front cover and double page spread.
Looking back at my preliminary task, I feel I have learnt in the progression fro it to the full product a creative thinking. It now helps me to design products more quickly and more effectively.
The masterhead on my front cover is ‘THUNDER’. The word ‘thunder’ sounds very solid and the meteorological thunder creates noise, therefore I think that if I would recommend the magazine to some people saying just the above word they probably ask me; “is this is a rock magazine?” . This is not the only element that effectively represents rock social group. The background on the front cover and on the double page is black, the font is gothic, the article is about the rock music festival and there are couple of pictures of the crowd at the concert including me, wearing a black shirt on the front cover. I have chosen ‘black’ as the dominating colour for my magazine because ‘black’ is the dominating colour in rock music, therefore I think that it effectively underlines the music genre of my magazine.
The media institution that might distribute my magazine, would be a small independent UK release, distributed around concerts and nightclubs because it is a cheaper way and we can’t be sure how many readers would spend their money to buy the magazine, however, if the magazine would gain popularity within the social group, it is more likely that the big distribution company will spot it and then distribute on the large scale.
I would try to attract my audience by advertising my magazine on the internet. Almost everybody has now access to the internet and it is less expensive comparing to advertisement in the TV or Radio. Also, according to the statistics, teenagers are spending more time, surfing on the internet that watching TV, however to address my audience, I would use coverlines of famous bands to attract them.
From the process of constructing this product, I learnt quite a lot about technologies and I gain more experience that before. I am now more confident with using Photoshop Elements because if something went wrong with the design, I have tried to use other functions and other tools to make the elements of the design look better. I have also learnt how to use the internet for a effective research and how to run a virtual blog which I have never done, before the magazine project.
I have tried to put a lot of effort into the project because I wanted my double page spread and of course the front cover, to look professional and have similar forms and conventions of real magazine. This was my aim. I ended up with conclusion that the most effective way to convince the readers is the well chosen layout, use of colours and nice, big image that will appeal to particular social group. If these forms are well combined together, the front cover and the rest of the magazine starts to look professional even if it is designed by amateur. In real magazine, the layout is clear, the colors are not too bright and not too dark therefore it makes the reader to actually buy and read the magazine. In my opinion, I have included theses forms and conventions to my front cover and double page spread.
Looking back at my preliminary task, I feel I have learnt in the progression fro it to the full product a creative thinking. It now helps me to design products more quickly and more effectively.
The masterhead on my front cover is ‘THUNDER’. The word ‘thunder’ sounds very solid and the meteorological thunder creates noise, therefore I think that if I would recommend the magazine to some people saying just the above word they probably ask me; “is this is a rock magazine?” . This is not the only element that effectively represents rock social group. The background on the front cover and on the double page is black, the font is gothic, the article is about the rock music festival and there are couple of pictures of the crowd at the concert including me, wearing a black shirt on the front cover. I have chosen ‘black’ as the dominating colour for my magazine because ‘black’ is the dominating colour in rock music, therefore I think that it effectively underlines the music genre of my magazine.
The media institution that might distribute my magazine, would be a small independent UK release, distributed around concerts and nightclubs because it is a cheaper way and we can’t be sure how many readers would spend their money to buy the magazine, however, if the magazine would gain popularity within the social group, it is more likely that the big distribution company will spot it and then distribute on the large scale.
I would try to attract my audience by advertising my magazine on the internet. Almost everybody has now access to the internet and it is less expensive comparing to advertisement in the TV or Radio. Also, according to the statistics, teenagers are spending more time, surfing on the internet that watching TV, however to address my audience, I would use coverlines of famous bands to attract them.
From the process of constructing this product, I learnt quite a lot about technologies and I gain more experience that before. I am now more confident with using Photoshop Elements because if something went wrong with the design, I have tried to use other functions and other tools to make the elements of the design look better. I have also learnt how to use the internet for a effective research and how to run a virtual blog which I have never done, before the magazine project.
Wednesday 25 February 2009
Eye Candi Magazine
Wednesday 11th February 2009
In today's lesson I will begin to design the Eye Candi Front Cover. I have my sketch done so all I need, is time and imagination.
I decided to choose the blue background as its quite a popular colour and add the effect of spunge, so that it would not look so simple. I was thinking of copying the original Eye Candi Logo for my project but later on I came up with some good idea and I designed my own. The main article for this issue is ''The Trip of the Year".
These are just a few examples of the items that appeared on the front cover. I will try to describe it briefly in my evaluation.
P.S: I did not managed to finish the project in this lesson. There is a half term next week, however the deadline is the week after half term so I will definitely finish the project until then.
Eye Candi Magazine
Eye Candi Front Cover
Monday 9th February 2009
Today its time to get on with my my next task which is Eye Candi Front Cover and it's contents page. I'm not going to design it in photoshop but I will make the sketch and plan of it so I will have some idea of how it will look like and therefore I will have more time for design, next lesson.
Thursday 19 February 2009
Monday 9 February 2009
Magazine
Wednesday 4th February 2009
Today, everyone are back after the long weekend caused by the snow. During the weekend I had the chance to think of the article and second page, as it is the double page spread.
Therefore its time to design the second page.
I started to design the second page. It is made up three images found on google and one image of my own. It has simple. short text with information of the festival e.g: where the festival will be held and where to purchase tickets.
Wednesday 4 February 2009
First Magazine Evaluation-October 2008
For the first media project I had to design a magazine front cover for one of the issues, as we were put into group of five and each one of us had to produce one cover.
Firstly we performed a photo shoot of the members in our group as the aim was to make ‘stars’ of ourselves. When the photo shoot was done, we had to make a plan for the cover, including magazine title; price; font; font size; genre and the audience.
Our magazine is a rock theme magazine called ‘THUNDER’ and it is targeted at 16-17 years old rock/metal fans. We have chosen such young audience because we thought that teenagers are more obsessed with the music than older fans. The price of our magazine is only ₤2,49 as many teenagers cannot afford magazine for higher price. However to attract even more audience we have decided to give out some free gifts such as posters. In my issue there is a guitar pick.
To represent rock/metal social groups I decided to use dark colours for the background and white/grey for the text. Titles of famous rock bands such as ‘Metallica’ is the addition to it. However the big picture of the rock star that fill up almost the whole cover is the most successful representation of rock/metal social groups as he is wearing black shirt giving the rock finger gesture. Adding this all together gives a clear representation of rock/metal social group.
I tried to design the magazine cover similar to forms and conventions of real music magazine. My cover has all features of real music magazine such as big masthead, sub headings, cover lines and even a bar code. These all features were designed using professional computer software ‘ Adobe Photoshop Elements’ and in my opinion the cover looks professional therefore distributors of rock magazines such as NME or Kerrang would give us a chance.
Making the magazine cover was not only fun but also useful. I never used iMacs before and their operating system therefore it was a challenge for me, but now I have experience in using both.
If I were to make another front cover, I would do all things differently…….because two same covers for two different issues are not that attractive.
Firstly we performed a photo shoot of the members in our group as the aim was to make ‘stars’ of ourselves. When the photo shoot was done, we had to make a plan for the cover, including magazine title; price; font; font size; genre and the audience.
Our magazine is a rock theme magazine called ‘THUNDER’ and it is targeted at 16-17 years old rock/metal fans. We have chosen such young audience because we thought that teenagers are more obsessed with the music than older fans. The price of our magazine is only ₤2,49 as many teenagers cannot afford magazine for higher price. However to attract even more audience we have decided to give out some free gifts such as posters. In my issue there is a guitar pick.
To represent rock/metal social groups I decided to use dark colours for the background and white/grey for the text. Titles of famous rock bands such as ‘Metallica’ is the addition to it. However the big picture of the rock star that fill up almost the whole cover is the most successful representation of rock/metal social groups as he is wearing black shirt giving the rock finger gesture. Adding this all together gives a clear representation of rock/metal social group.
I tried to design the magazine cover similar to forms and conventions of real music magazine. My cover has all features of real music magazine such as big masthead, sub headings, cover lines and even a bar code. These all features were designed using professional computer software ‘ Adobe Photoshop Elements’ and in my opinion the cover looks professional therefore distributors of rock magazines such as NME or Kerrang would give us a chance.
Making the magazine cover was not only fun but also useful. I never used iMacs before and their operating system therefore it was a challenge for me, but now I have experience in using both.
If I were to make another front cover, I would do all things differently…….because two same covers for two different issues are not that attractive.
Wednesday 28 January 2009
Magazine
Magazine - Double Page Spread
Wednesday 28th January 2009
Today, I'm designing an article called 'Rock am Ring' for my double page spread.
I'm using Adobe Photoshop Elements to do that. So far, I have inserted two things, the picture of the stage with the crowd and the text logo of the Rock am Ring festival. Both images were found on Google Images.
I have decided to think of the background for the article as the background is just the black page. Therefore to make it more attractive, I dragged quite interesting, high resolution picture found on wikipedia, to the article's canvas, I resized it and changed the opacity to 22. Now, the magazine page looks a lot better and attractive.
Now its time to think of the article itself (the text). According to my plan, the article should contain the dates of the festival, the list of metal/rock bands, the overview of the festival and some historical background. The best source for these information is wikipedia. So, according to the wikipedia's info I have wrote some part of the article. I didn't managed to write the whole article because the lesson is about to finish.
Magazine
Magazine - Double Page Spread
Monday 26th January 2009
On Monday, I started to plan the double page spread for my previous music magazine called ''Thunder''. I have decided to write a 'Rock am Ring' article, as the title appeared on the front cover.
The 'Rock am Ring' article will contain: list of rock/metal bands, different stages, dates of the festival, overview of the festival and probably the facilities.
I have decided to include rock/metal bands such as: Metallica, Machine Head, Kings of Leon, Linkin Park, Lost Prophets, Judas Priest, HIM, CKY, Apocalyptica and Nickelback.
The dates are as follows: 24th October, 25th October, 26th October 2009. I have also named the stages: North Stage, West Stage, East Stage and I've sorted the bands for these stages, however this is just a plan so things are remained to been seen while making the proper article, probably next lesson.
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