FRONT COVER STAGES OF PRODUCTION & AUDIENCE

FEEDBACK

This is my first draft I created for my front cover, it was my first time experimenting properly on Photoshop and looking back now is a poor front cover and it looks a lot like a contents page with the strip on the left hand side. The next few slides are the audience feedback I received from it…

FIRST DRAFT FRONT COVER :

Option 2 - Option 1 -

CHOOSING THE RIGHT PICTURE FOR FRONT COVER

AUDIENCE FEEDBACK RESULTS: “I really liked Option 1 as it looks like the pictures extending back which is effective when you first look at the magazine” - Hannah Upchurch

“Option 2 is a well taken photo! However, the person sat on the floor looks out of place and isn’t entirely clear why she is there. Whereas with Option 1 you can see both of them clearly!”- Catherine Upchurch

Decode Allure Vibe

CHOOSING THE NAME OF MY MAGAZINEAudience Feedback:

“I personally like ‘Decode’ the best as it links to magazines and our media course. Also Allure sounds like a name for a fragrance magazine” – Holly Bowler

CHOOSING MY GENRE OF MAGAZINE

Before we even started planning our magazines I had always wanted to do an Indie magazine as I felt it would be a good genre to explore and try and create my own representation of an indie music magazine so I asked people on survey monkey if they would read an indie magazine and 40% said No, yet 60% said Yes so I decided to go with Indie as my genre of magazine.

CHOOSING THE COLOUR SCHEME OF MY MAGAZINE

I asked people on Survey Monkey what colours would you associate with an indie/folk music magazine and 36.59% said ‘Neutral colours – brown, grey black’ and 31.71% said ‘Dark, block colours (black,grey,red,dark blue, dark green). I will incorporate those colours into my magazine as they are the colours that represent indie music magazines. Yet I will also add my own twist by adding some baby colours as I feel this represents indie and its good to experiment.

MAGAZINE CONSTRUCTION – 1ST DRAFTI then added a place for the tagline to go which I will also make transparent as currently it looks odd.

I added a box on the left hand side which will be where my secondary images and sublines will go. I made the box transparent so that it looked more natural and effective.

From my audience feedback I am going to change the colour of the box to a darker or more neutral colour as from my previous audience feedback those are the colours you’d expect to see for an Indie music magazine.

I decided to flip the picture for my front cover as it gave me more room to add secondary images, cover lines to my magazine effectively.

“I like the positioning of the boxes but the colour of the box is lilac which doesn’t match your colour scheme” – Mrs Gama

“The picture looks better flipped this way then before as you have a lot more space, very creative!” – Holly Bowler

ADDING SECONDARY IMAGESI then chose 3 secondary images to go onto my front cover so that people who look at the front of this particular magazine may be convinced to buy it if they see who else features in this magazine and what else they are getting for the money they are paying!

I decided my 3 photos would be of other artists as usually when people see other artists they know of that convinces them to buy the magazine as they are their idols for example. I made sure that every image was clear and that most of them had the use of direct address to really captivate the audiences attention.

“I really like the secondary images Beth! But the way they are arranged look like this is a contents page rather than a front cover, maybe position the images in different angles to make it look more random rather than ordered!” – Mrs Gama.

“The secondary images really fit in with the Indie genre and you’ve created a clear link with the main image as it’s a similar location which means they all look good together on a page as they all fit in with the theme!” – Annie Mingo.

ADDING MASTHEAD, STRAPLINE & PLUGThe next thing I did was add my masthead to my magazine front cover. I made sure that it was bold and stood out to the audience as I wanted it to be the first part of my magazine that catches their eyes! The dark blue colour scheme goes well with my magazine personally. However, I am not sure about the font as it looks like you’d find that font on a young children's magazine!

I like the dark blue colour scheme, maybe you could add some other colours to it. The masthead is good but I agree with you about perhaps the font not being the right font for an Indie music magazine! – Chloe Surridge

I decided to do a circle to resemble where the plug is going to go on my front cover, I positioned it next to the masthead so that when the audience look at the magazine they always look in a ‘Z’ so they will look at the masthead, the plug, then main image down to my strapline at the bottom.

I also added a Strapline at the bottom of the magazine which I made dark blue also so that the colour scheme was clear! I also made it transparent so that it didn’t take the effect away from the guitar in my models hand which is a key part of the front cover as it highlights that this magazine is a music magazine.

ADDING THE MAIN COVER LINE

“For the sublines Beth, you need to tell us more as you’ve said ‘Explore their lives’ who are ‘they’? Perhaps add names of artists instead?” – Mrs Gama

I also added sublines to my secondary images they are ‘Exclusive Interview’, ‘Explore their lives’ and ‘Many new artists’ which adds effect to the images as it also tells you abit about why they are on the front cover and what is about them within the magazine, extra detail basically.

The next step in creating my front cover for my music magazine was adding the main cover line. I decided to use the rule of 3 and relate it to a festival as that’s what my double page spread is going to be about (featured band playing at an indie music festival). Again, I made this box transparent so that you could still see the guitar and I made sure that no text was covering the guitar to make it even more clear.

“This is good Beth, I recommend coming up with a name for your artists instead of just their 2 names as you wouldn’t usually find that on a music magazine! Also only one part of the main cover line has to be in bold and a bit bigger then a part underneath can be a bit smaller.” – Mrs Heywood

ADDING MORE TEXT, INFORMATION & A BARCODE

I then added text to my tagline and it reads ‘Biggest Indie Pop magazine sensation in the whole nation’ this is effective as it can persuade people to buy this magazine as it shows its popularity and promotes the magazine.

“I love your front cover! Especially the ‘music, mud & mayhem’ part of the main cover line, it really suits the Indie genre!” – Tara Taylor

For the next stage of creating my magazine front cover I added a barcode to the bottom left hand side of my front cover as I didn’t want to block the guitar in the bottom right hand side as it’s a key part to this front cover.

I then decided to make my plug colour orange which is a subtle and neutral colours which adds another colour to the colour scheme and also goes quite well with the colour of the guitar. I also added some text which says ‘Free tickets to festivals near you’ which may encourage people to buy the magazine to be in with the chance of winning free festival tickets!

I also added a little orange music note symbol which also allows people to know this is a music magazine.

“It’s beginning to come together quite well Beth! The tagline is great and the colour of the plug goes very nicely with the colour of the guitar and leaves in the background!” – Mrs Gama.

FRONT COVER – 2ND DRAFT:I decided to change my front cover based on quite a lot of negative audience feedback and I didn’t like my old version. This time I got rid of the strip on the side with the secondary images and added cover lines of names of famous Indie musicians and my main cover line as these are conventions you would usually see on a front cover! I also got rid of the dark blue

colour scheme as it looked quite blocky and not very professional. I wanted to create a natural indie music magazine and the use of lighter colours displayed this well. I also changed my font of the masthead as the previous font looked too much like a cartoon font and didn’t clearly display that my magazine is an Indie magazine when you first looked at it.

“This is looking so much better already Beth, you have some clear conventions of a front cover here! – Mrs Gama

“The indie genre is so more clear now, the block blue & cartoon font previously weren’t working and didn’t reveal your genre at all, this is looking better! The only issue is I am struggling to see the text clearly!” – Annie Mingo

AUDIENCE FEEDBACK – WHICH DRAFT FRONT COVER DO THEY PREFER?

Draft 1

Draft 2

You can see clearly on the above pie chart that 87% of people asked said they preferred Draft 2 of my front cover and only 13% preferred my 1st draft of my front cover, so that is why I decided to scrap my first draft.

FURTHER AUDIENCE FEEDBACK– 2ND DRAFT:

As you can see on the left, I got some Audience Feedback on my 2nd draft for my Front Cover of my Indie music mag. I put my Front Cover on the board displaying it to my Media class. I asked them to criticize my Front Cover, but of course do it in a constructive and sensible way so that I can act on it and make the improvements that are necessary to make my magazine look a lot more professional. Some of the feedback I got was… “You might want to try a background behind the quotes” or, “You repeat ‘Free’ and ‘Festival’ on the front cover” and “Hard to read the green text” also, “Maybe try and edit the houses out in the background”.

FRONT COVER – 3RD DRAFT:After receiving the Audience Feedback on my 2nd draft I decided to try another version of a Front Cover with a completely different picture. I think this works a lot better by just having one person and it also makes most of the text clearer to read which is a positive.

The changes I made to the front cover this time were that I changed the font of my Masthead again and made it a block orange colour to match the guitar making it stand out and link in. I then moved the masthead to the right and moved the plug to the left. I changed the colour of my main cover line as well to a light blue and moved the barcode over to the right!

“This is very impressive Beth, the changes you have made have really worked and its looking a lot more professional, well done! The only thing is that some of the cover lines still aren’t very clear, maybe try adding a block background instead of a transparent one?” – Mrs Heywood

“Wow, well done Beth! I love this version of your front cover! However, the secondary image on the right looks a bit strange as its not anchored?” – Mrs Gama

AUDIENCE FEEDBACK – WHICH FRONT COVER IMAGE DO YOU PREFER?

Image 1

Image 2

As you can see from the pie chart above, 34% of people that I asked said that they preferred Image 1 for my front cover. Yet 66% of people that I asked said that they preferred Image 2. This is why I decided to create a 3rd draft for my Front Cover based on what people preferred as I want my magazine to appeal to people and look professional.

FURTHER AUDIENCE FEEDBACK – 3RD DRAFT:

On the right hand side you can see some further Audience Feedback I received from my Media Studies teacher (Mrs Heywood). She annotated parts where I need to improve on my front cover. Here is what she said around the image…• The barcode needs work as it’s too long • The tree in this image is taking up too much of the

front cover and is taking away the effect of the cover lines, masthead & the main cover line. We might need to move the image over to the right a bit, to prevent this.

• On your plug where it says “free tickets to a festival near you” the “free” should be “Free” with a capital F.

• I think the masthead would look better on the left hand side and the plug on the right, try it and see what it looks like!

• If you’re going to include the secondary image on the right it needs to be anchored down.

AUDIENCE FEEDBACK – WHICH FRONT COVER DO YOU PREFER?

Front Cover 1

Front Cover 2

Front Cover 3

As you can see from the above pie chart 6% said that they preferred Front Cover 1, 24% said that they preferred Front Cover 2 and 70% said that they preferred Front Cover 3. This is why I have decided to stick with my 3rd Front Cover as like I said previously I want my magazine to appeal to people and become more professional.

FRONT COVER – FINAL VERSION

This is my Final Version of my Front Cover. I made a few changes as I received Audience Feedback from my Media class saying for example…

• “There needs to be more cover lines as you have 4 and you can hardly see them” – Adam Chapman

• “Your secondary image is floating and isn’t anchored and doesn’t have a border to separate it from the main image, you could change that” – Annie Mingo

• “Something could be mentioned about the magazine being a first edition, perhaps a plug could be added? – Millie Perkins

I took on board all the Audience Feedback and added a plug, more cover lines which have a block background instead of transparent to make them stand out more and I added a border to my Secondary image so it’s clearly separated from the main image.