Mark Clifford: 2012

Evaluation

When creating my magazine I used effectively a lot of the conventions from usual magazine structure.
Firstly and most obviously I produced a masthead as necessary with any magazine to show the reader what magazine it is. I made it around one sixth of the page as I think it’s important to make it stand out, I layered my main image over the masthead which is common for magazines such as Kerrang and Rocksound, two magazines I heavily based my cover on, in terms of genre and layout.

As seen typically in music magazines my cover boasts a splash, as does my other example of a cover, located just below my masthead on the right, used to promote a certain aspect of the magazine. I decided on using a splash as I feel it’s important to entice the possible buyer with competitions, gig guides, reviews etc.

My cover also features a strapline ‘ARE OUT FOR BLOOD’ as does my example magazine ‘ROCKS

MOST CONTROVERSIAL STAR BARES HIS SOUL’. I used this certain idea for a strapline as it links with the graphic blood on the subject of my main image so felt it was key to use intertextuality to link the two otherwise the point of my model being covered in blood would be completely pointless, I also feel the whole blood suits my genre as blood is a stereotype of that genre in some cases.

Another feature my cover page and practically every cover page created share in common, a date. After researching the stereotypical placement of the date, I decided on placing it in the barcode rather than near the masthead. Also my cover features an issue number underneath my masthead which is also a common convention throughout magazine covers, however unlike my date I have decided against following the majority of magazines I researched and also placing it in the barcode area. My reasons for this are to simply not completely imitate my examples. The price however does follow the normal trend of being located in the barcode. I decided on this because if I was going to feature it anywhere but on the barcode it would be in a splash but as I already featured one for competition purposes I decided on placing in the barcode area. My barcode itself is featured in the bottom right hand corner of the page, which is an extremely common placement throughout music magazines.

Another feature my magazine has in common with most is a skyline, obviously placed at the top of the page however unlike most, I have decided to feature a list of bands that are featured within instead of the more common promotion of a competition for example or a giveaway. For example as seen on the magazine cover I’ve chosen as a comparison the skyline contains ‘FREE DROP DEAD CLOTHING DISCOUNT FOR EVERY READER’. I’ve basically switched between the common layout of band names at the bottom and the competition section or teasing contents the example based on my cover being ‘letlive poster special’.

A logo is also featured on my cover, obviously the brand logo in a specific font.
As you can see from my puff it advertises a competition to win tickets to see a brand image to what my mainstream audience will recognise but to the untrained seems like symbol but it just ‘BVB’ standing for black veil brides. I simply created this by tilting the letters to create a very convincing Black Veil Brides brand image. The example of this which is usually uncommon I got this opinion from researching multiple similar magazines, Rocksound, Kerrang and Metal Hammer for instance is the usage of a logo on the front cover, which for my comparison magazine is the image of a cat which is the Drop Dead Clothing logo which is apparent to promote their giveaway this week it also helps it look official.

Teasing contents are also featured on my cover which is once again a frequent and in my opinion highly necessary feature. On my front cover I used exclusive reviews the magazine had gotten to lure them in, I used a rhetorical question to do this and furthered my attempt to connect and lure in my target audience by using a pun which relates to fans of Black Veil Brides. The pun lies within ‘Did They Set The World On Fire’ of which once again to the naked eye seems a normal sentence but to fans of my magazine and especially Black Veil Brides will understand my pun as the album reviewed goes by the name of Set The World On Fire.

Unlike my comparison magazine I have decided against featuring a direct example of synergy. Kerrang, as shown above promotes Drop Dead Clothing in this particular issue. In promoting another company (in this case a big one for the audience they have chosen) related to their cover artist also.
The reason I didn’t use an example of synergy was to show the readers this issue was all about my magazine and showing it made it alone with no massive sponsors, instead of using sponsors I decided on featuring many of the biggest and modern bands of the era and capturing them with my cover artist who obviously aren’t real but for the sake of the assignment were currently making the big time. Looking back on it I do feel I should have possibly included synergy.

A feature found on literally every single magazine cover in existence is of course a headline of which I found using one mandatory my headline is ‘CLOSE ENCOUNTER ARE OUT FOR BLOOD’ my reasons for this obviously link toward the props I used for my cover artist. I made my headline to be the size I believed advertised it the most to catch the attention but not overdoing but leaving space open for other features. My headlines space between letters was edited as a direct connotation to the word ‘CLOSE’ obviously made closer to relate but left encounter at its usual spatial difference.

And my last point and final difference for my front cover is how little space I’ve used in comparison to my example of Kerrang. As you can see from the cover of Kerrang space is fully used by multiple splashes and competitions and thumbnails of the posters included. I decided on keeping it fairly plain but enough of the features to make realistic and high quality magazine cover because of the house styles main colour being white the idea of plain relates to the ideology of white. My biggest regret on my cover is not using thumbnails to advertise my poster special.

For my contents as you can see I followed a similar layout to Kerrang, with an image based at the top with columns underneath with the contents.

First of all unlike kerrang example I chose to caption my photo at the top ‘A Day To Forget Arena Debut’. I decided on doing this as I was unable to include more photos as seen on Kerrangs cover so my image looked rather plain so decided on captioning.

Next I utilised the feature of a letter from the editor. This is an extremely common convention within magazine production. Within my editors message I have highlighted the brand name of my magazine simply just to highlight the name. Also similar to other magazines my editor’s message contains a sentence or two about the editor talking about the cover artist as well as the introduction to my magazine as I’ve stated on the cover it is the first issue. The editor’s passage is also ended with his signature which for me was simply drawn using the pen tool on adobe photoshop.

Numbers are used very frequently on my contents page, this is obviously to state which page my news, quiz, reviews features and poster sections are on. When choosing the numbers I did not simply pick at random I thought logically as to where I would put them obviously putting similar things near each other such as the reviews section for example only being a few pages apart which adds to realism my contents page gives off. And placing the quiz section at the back appeared logical to me as it is in other magazines, such as Kerrang itself.

The main difference between my own cover and my comparison cover is the amount of images on a real cover compared to my own as I only have two however I edited both images. My top image was darkened as I felt it was too light and lacked realism as a live music event despite being one I also took into consideration my genre of music and felt it necessary to darken it so it matched my genre. As for my image of the editor I simply cropped and blurred out the edges so it sat in nicely.
I tried to make my reviews, features etc as realistic as possible by making the number of features involved as big as possible without overcrowding.

Firstly I will discuss my main page headline which is mandatory to letting the reader have inkling as what the content of the page will be. I feel it is the right size to fit the page and grab the reader’s attention.
Next I will discuss the main image. I decided on using the layout of my main image being on the left hand side dominating the entire page but being layered under things such as text boxes, quotes and captions. I did this as I planned to only use one image for the double page unlike my example so wished for it to take up as much space as possible whilst still leaving enough room for sufficient amounts of text for my article.

Features such as drop caps (which is featured in my comparison) and pull quotes were also used for my double page spread. I used the drop cap as it is a common convention within most articles for magazines so felt it was necessary to use one to carry on creating realism within my project.
Same applies for my pull quote it was used to add realism and once again to let the readers get a sneak peak at what was to come in the article.

A proper quote was used and is shown at the top left hand corner of the page which is another convention I have used that doesn’t feature on my comparison image.

My article before it starts also reveals the name of who had taken the photo and who the writer of the article is, another common convention within double page spreads.

It also possesses a lead, ‘NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK CLOSE ENCOUNTER…’ which once again is an example of a tease device and a sneak peak of what is to come in the article.

My magazine as a whole represents the certain stereotype of an ‘emo’ or a ‘mosher’ with things like blood. Blood is commonly related to each of those stereotypes for their lifestyles perhaps.
Age is represented by things such as the competitions and posters etc. These features reveal age by using stereotypes the older generation are more often than not, not going to be interested in posters and live music. Whereas the younger generation (my target audience) will be interested.
The socio-economic group I feel my magazine relates to is still mainly, the unemployed as I feel the age when you start to become fully employed and out of education is when you become too old for my magazine.

I feel if a media company where to sign my magazine it would be IPC Media rather than someone like Bauer. My reasons for this being unlike Bauer who owns the right to Kerrang, IPC are yet to have a magazine based on the genre I have chosen, in fact from my research the closest to this is NME magazine which promotes a completely different genre all be it a larger and more popular genre but I feel they would be interested as my idea is original to them.

By pricing my magazine at £2 pound I feel I have made it available for my chosen socio economic group. Factors which helped me decide the final price were looking at similar weekly magazine prices, such as Kerrang. As its weekly making it was important to make it as affordable as possible without selling myself short. I attract my target audience by appealing to what their stereotypical lifestyle choice is, such as with my splash I offer the readers the chance to win tickets to see ‘Black Veil Brides’ obviously going to live concerts is part of many young readers lifestyle, everyone wants to see their favourite band.

To create the magazine, contents draft and double page spread used I had to use multiple difficult techniques in photoshop. These techniques include, firstly, Gaussian blur. I used this in order to blur the outside of my models hair and arms etc. so it did not look as if he were just copied and pasted on to the cover, if I hadn’t of used Gaussian blur editing my photo would have surely lacked a realistic look. Another editing technique used was spot fix. My cover artist had a few minor blemishes of which were simply removed with the spot fix tool. The quick selection tool was also used in removing the background image of images for the contents page. However it was not used for my front cover unconventionally, I chose to stray away from that particular technique and decided on changing the contrast and opacity to create a purely white background but creating a shadow effect.
More techniques were used for fonts such as on the writing ‘close encounter’ effects such as, drop shadow, inner glow and colour overlay were used to create a style of font I felt suited the cover the most.

As you can see above I edited the word ‘close’ and made the kerning of each letter closer to fit with the word. As you can see from the photo above the letters in close are at a much smaller spacing than ‘encounter’. A technique used on my double page but this time not in photoshop instead on Microsoft Publisher was drop cap and a pull quote. I decided on using both these techniques as they are both common conventions for the type of double page spread I chose to do. An article. In deciding how many lines it would take over I seeked evidence from other magazines and decided to use the most popular number. Which was 6 (my print screen skips out the first line). The examples I used were from kerrang, rocksound and NME. Layering played a pivotal part in creating realism for each of the pages I had produced, for example layering my cover artist over the top of my masthead.

This is unconventional for a magazine to do in only its first issue as a key idea would be to ensure the readers get full knowledge of the name but saying I placed in the right place so people could still make out my brand name with ease, but most importantly I decided on layering over the masthead as it simply looked more realistic than having writing over my cover artist. This is why I changed my teasing contents located to the left of my cover artist so it wasn’t covering my cover artist. Obviously it was important to layer ‘close encounter are out for blood’ over my image as in retrospect that right there is the key feature in enticing the readers to buy my magazine.

From when I began the preliminary task of creating a college magazine front cover and contents page to now I feel I’ve learnt how to successfully use photoshop to a high standard. And most importantly have learnt that using the major conventions of my selected task ultimately adds a lot of realism