Front cover - 1st draft

Evaluation

My magazine has a multi-platform presence. It is both as a physical product and also online.

I have incorporated some of the conventions used on the Total Guitar magazine front cover, such as the promotional badge to lure my target audience. I also took inspiration from the first Kerrang double page spread I deconstructed with the main image/images on the top half of the page, and the article on the bottom. For my contents page I took inspiration from the Q magazine contents page I deconstructed with the one main image and all the page references on the side. I also did product placement to compare my front cover to others of the same kind.

I believe my magazine has a very recognizable house style, I used the orange, white and black colour combination throughout my magazine. I have also used a variety of different but consistent fonts throughout my magazine that connote heavy metal. My logo is the devil horn hand sign which is the most symbolic representation of heavy metal, I have used this on my front, contents and double page spread pages.

My magazine represents the type of person be they in their teens or in the forties who really love their music and enjoy listening to it and rocking out on full blast.

 I believe I have come a long way since my pre-lim task. I have developed my skills in Photoshop extensively and have greatly furthered my knowledge in the media and what conventions are used to create a great music magazine. And of course it looks a lot better!

My questionnaire which I gave to people I would consider my target audience showed me the best and most popular bands that they wanted to see featured in my magazine. Out of a selection of possible names for my magazine, Riff came out on top, so I listened to them and made that the name of my magazine. The colour combination I used for my magazine was not originally on the questionnaire, I only really found out it looked good was when I begun experimenting in Photoshop. When my magazine was finished, I showed people from my target audience each page, this is what they said...

James Richardson: "Brilliant, love the flames, aesthetically pleasing, It's also visually engaging, you have kept to the house style well, good use of unique images."

James Osment: "Like the bright colours! If I saw it in a shop I'd be engaged to buy it."

For making my magazine I used Adobe Photoshop CS4, CS5 (trial) and CS1.
For recording my videos I used CamStudio, and Windows Movie Maker to edit and render them. I decided to do video blog updates because I find it much easier to speak than to write and I enjoyed incorporating my skills with certain software into my coursework.
 For my deconstructions and my photo shoots I used Microsoft Powerpoint to upload them onto Slideshare, then from there onto my blog.

Contents page - Final (I hope)


This is the end result of my contents page after I had taken on board all the criticism I received for my first draft of my contents. I have moved the editorial profile to the bottom of the page from the top because it was too congested there, I also added a photo of myself to the editorial profile as requested. I have also changed the 'Devil horns' logo to make it more obvious that it is what it is, I was a bit sceptical about doing this first, but it worked out fine. There was a small bland space underneath the word 'contents' so I came up with the slogan 'no one can destroy the metal!' and added it to the page. Another change I made was I added some images of the featured articles to the left of the page, a picture of my made up band Ironfire, a picture of Black Sabbath to go with my article 'Black Sabbath reforming?', and finally a photo of Justin Bieber with a mustache etc drawn on him to go with the article '10 reasons why Justin Bieber sucks'. The final changes I made were changing the font on the articles and the drop shadow to the colour orange, I also put some red on the shadows of my background image.

All in all I think this looks like a very professional contents page with a good use of colours and images with a recognisable house style and masthead.

Front Cover - Final



This is definitely my final version of the front cover... Really.

Product Placement



Today, I went to the local newsagents to take some photos of my magazine next to some already existing music magazines on a display case to see if it looked like a professional cover. The one thing I didn't like about it that when I printed it, it left a small white boarder around the edge, but it's hardly noticeable. I think it looked best next to Kerrang because of them being of a very similar genre. I think without the white boarder then it would definatly look right in a shop.

Analysis of 'I' newspaper.


Independents-i-newspaper-007.jpg
http://www.independent.co.uk/i/


‘I’ is a new magazine/newspaper by the Independent. It costs 20p which is very cheap for a newspaper; this price is very competitive with other rival newspapers. It was created by the same people that created the Independent and it is catered for readers of all ages. It looks like a short newspaper with much less pages that other newspapers such as The Sun and The Daily Mail. This feels much more like the type of newspaper I would read because it contains all the top stories of the day and the main topics that people are talking about, and the fact it is smaller and cheaper than most other newspapers so in my opinion it is one of the best daily newspapers around. It’s unique selling point is that it is a newspaper for all ages it being much more manageable to read fully than one of the larger newspapers such as The Sun, it contains all you will find in a larger magazine, just not as much. It also has a website which also has the days top stories posted on it, and some other information about the newspaper. It’s advertised mainly on the television with the use of its commercial which details the different type of people that would read this magazine. I would likely also advertise my magazine on the television with the use of commercials that tell people what they may find inside the magazine if they buy it.     

Photoshoot 02 planning

One lesson in Media when all the macs were taken me and my friends James R and James O were discussing our next Photoshoot, planning the location, when we were going to do it, who we are going to use, what instruments we were going to use etc. We decided to do our Photoshoot in the drama studio but sadly the person we had to ask for permission to use it wasn't there at the time so we left a note on her desk. We then asked the people we wanted to use for the Photoshoot if they could do it, thankfully they could and did. Sadly when it came to the Photoshoot, we hadn't heard from the person who could give us permission to use the studio so instead we used the music room.

Photoshoot Storyboard

Masthead ideas