Raw magazine images

Preliminary evaluation

Before I made my College magazine I explored a few different designs and ideas till I found a style I liked and suited the style of the given audience. I started with the title, I wanted something catchy and fun that related to college life at Priestly. I toyed around with some titles like ‘Knowledge of the College’, ‘Crashin’ in the Crescent’, ‘Crescent Moon’, and ‘Wicked Wicked!’ etc. In the end I went with ‘Crashin’ in the Crescent’ as it was funny and catchy and relates to the Priestley students.

The most important thing in a magazine is the content and articles inside, the main features from this featured on the cover to attract people into buying the magazine. Seeing as it was the beginning of the year it seemed fitting that there would be articles for new students to help them in their first few days at college. This is where I thought of the idea of ‘First Day Tips’, what to do in your first lessons, what to bring, what to do in your free periods etc. I also thought of a few other articles for example ‘Besting the Bullies’ but where it gave good advise it doesn’t give the best impression of the college.

It was a new experience designing a cover for a magazine so sketching some ideas helped me with my final design, I also took inspiration from January 2010 issue of ‘Rolling Stones’ magazine. It is such an iconic magazine from its mast head font to its cover stars so I took inspiration from that and merged it with my concept sketches.

Using Adobe Photoshop CS5 made it very easy to create a magazine cover, the vast use of the tool allowed me to create anything I could think of. I like how it turned out but I know it could have been a lot better, but as a newcomer to Photoshop I think it was the best I could do at that time.

The overall outcome of my cover is really good; I like the flow of the text and the colours throughout it. I think the picture fits the magazine as it depicts the social and friendly environments of Priestley College. Looking back on it, if I were to change anything it would be the layout of my contents page, I think it’s good but it could have been better by what I put on it and the design I went for. If I were to do it again I wouldn’t have had such a big picture as the main focus and even out the ratio of words: picture, but I do like the fonts and styles of the txt, by using a drop shadow on the sub title font I made it look more like ‘Rolling Stones’ font but still maintain the magneto style. I think it was good to incorporate the use of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube showing the social networking connections between the college, students and staff. Using the puff at the top will catch the eye of the reader because it is different from the rest of the cover and when people read it and discover if they buy the magazine they would also get a free pencil case, incentives are great for attracting people into buying a product thus this should help shift more copies of my magazine.

Mock Plan for cover

Spider Diagrams

These are spider diagrams i created to explore the different types of Music magazines and to help me deside on my final plan for my magazine. I have done one about Instrument Magazines: Total Guitar etc. and the other about different musical Genres: Kerrang, NME, Vibe etc.

Kerrang! Cover Recreation

Market Research

I researched a few different professional products to find out their: target audience, sales counts, price and many other things. Kerrang'1 showed how they advertise and branch out their franchise to reach a wider audience and to connect with their audience.
http://www.nme.com/magazine
http://www.kerrang.com/
http://www.qthemusic.com/
http://www.vibe.com/

Kerrang!'s media kit gave all the information I needed to research these things.

http://s3.amazonaws.com/files.posterous.com/000017290trcmedia/5Nn2ojCE0YBLThMGneCfjbZS8l53dp2zaTJnZTDJu0XNT2YcqNDQq8LCj0Al/Kerrang_Media_Kit.pdf?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAJFZAE65UYRT34AOQ&Expires=1331566525&Signature=Qvte%2FRoz5mDQIzMqJsW1hJUhYJs%3D

Magazine Cover Analysis

The magazine cover I’m analysing is the March 2010 issue of Empire, this issue’s cover displays a range of conventions expected from a magazine cover and a great visual mise-en-scene. The use of many variants gives this cover something special and stands out above the rest.

Possibly the first thing you notice when you look at a magazine cover it the masthead, so you know what magazine you are looking at, the masthead font used on this issue is different from the typical font of Empire magazine. Due to the main feature being the film ‘Kick-Ass’ the font they used denotes the gory nature of the film, the font is a blood print on the wall behind Aaron Johnson as if from a scene in the film. It gives the connotations violence and action engaging the target audience of the film, this theme follows on throughout the whole cover.

The background for the cover is a kind of cracked plastered wall with posters on, these posters would have been put on as a different layer after editing them, this background has connotations of and urban theme and streets which are where superheroes are typical thought of fighting crime following the plot of the film. The posters they have used have been edited to look like comic book strips, as the film it based on the graphic novel of the same name. They have used a dotted pixel effect in the background of the posters like classic comic strips, put the characters name on banners as if the comic was introducing the characters and used pop are style colouring on the characters themselves.

‘Kick-Ass’ is written in a very large font and in a vivid green to draw the readers attention as it is the main story, the text has had splatters added to it to follow the theme of gore and violence and the angle of the two word are twisted in different angles, this could give the connotations of it being kicked and breaking off in different directions. The colours of the text are depicted from the costume of the main character and cover star, ‘Kick-Ass’- Aaron Johnson, he is the main feature so it maintains the flow from the green of his costume to the vivid green text on the page.

Another typical feature of magazine covers is to use quotes from the article within the magazine, Empire conforms to this convention a lot and do on this cover. “IT’S BLOODY, IT’S BRILLIANT, AND, BOY, DOES IT… KICK-ASS” it just one of the quotes, it’s almost a mini review on the front cover attracting the readers to find out what this amazing film is and why it’s so ‘brilliant’. The way that they made the words ‘bloody’ and ‘brilliant’ red makes them stand out more giving emphasis to the words. They also give references to other articles inside and ‘Avatar 2’, to show the large array of articles that this magazine includes, this text is also in a different colour separating it from the main feature of the magazine.

They use banners and a puff the highlight key statements and usually incentives for the reader, they cover includes a puff in the shape of a blood splat once again which says, “SEE KICK-ASS- FIRST AND FOR FREE! See page 93” this is an incentive to get the reader to buy this issue for a chance to win something and because it’s in a puff it stands out from the rest of the cover drawing the eye of the reader. They also use a banner across the top to point out the exclusive feature of this issue as it has a fold out collectors edition cover. This added feature makes it special and influences the reader to buy this magazine instead of Total Film perhaps due to the bonus feature.

This design could easily be recreated in Photoshop using the tools available in Adobe Photoshop CS5. Firstly the splatter puff is easily done by using a splatter custom shape or even a splatter shaped brush then change the colour to being white, to then get the text use the text tool and type in ‘SEE KICK-ASS- FIRST AND FOR FREE! See page 93’ then highlight the words ‘Kick-ass’ and change its colour the vivid green you’re replicating. To finish this feature make sure the text layers is above the puff and rotate the text box till it on the correct angle.

To recreate the masthead what I would do is first use the text tool to write ‘EMPIRE’ then use the magic wand tool to select the outline of the text, I would then import an image of a blood splatter and move the selected shape over onto the image. Then making sure I’m on the images layer click Ctrl+ Shift+ I to invert the selection and click delete, this should delete everything around the selected section leaving you with the blood image cut into the shape of the word ‘EMPIRE’, then move it into place. Around the image then I would add more images or splatter shape that look like blood to finish the masthead design.

The create to banner across the top of the cover I would just use the arrow from the custom shapes tool and draw it to the correct size then draw a triangle to fit slightly behind the tip of the arrow and make it green, then once again using the text tool right ‘AWESOME FOLD-OUT COLLECTORS’ COVER!’ and change the word ‘fold-out’ to green once again.

The make the large ‘Kick-Ass’ main story title would first use the text tool to create 2 different layers one which reads ‘Kick-‘ and the other saying ‘Ass’ then what I would do is rotate the 2 texts into position then merge the 2 layers to create one layer. I would move this layer into place then use the splatter shape once again and position splatters around the edges of the letters in the same green, then merge the multiple layers together to create the one image.

Finally I would import the image of Aaron Johnson, I would use the magic wand tool to get rid of the background of the image so I am just left with Aaron. I would then use the blur tool round the edges of him to soften the edges of the image giving the appearance of if all been on thing. I would then move the image into position and start the rearrange the layers.

First I would put the background in then layer the masthead on top, I would then put Aaron and the banner on top of these. After this is in place I would put everything else on top so the final cover had the masthead in the background with Aaron and the banner in the middle ground and all the other main features and sub-features in the foreground.