Music MagazineInitial ideas, Pre Production and Photoshop skill

Talia Smith

This is my hand drawn masthead design.I decided to draw my masthead because I felt I couldn’t find an appropriate font to fit my magazines theme. I used onomatopoeia wording for my masthead as it shows the meaning of the magazine, it’s girly, showing ‘twists’ in the music industry with new pop artists’ breakthroughs. It also implies dancing and having fun through music.

Masthead

These are colour scheme ideas I had for my masthead, I felt these colours would attract my target audience of teenage girls interested in pop music aged 13-16 the best as they’re stereotypically girly and feminine. They have a connotation of love, romance and cuteness.

Here is the finished masthead, by using photo shop I edited the text by using drop shadows and bevelling the shape to make it stand out and look like it leaps off the page, I also used layers to make the masthead and the main image overlap, because in many famous magazines this is a convention they follow, it shows that even though some of the text is covered up it can still be recognised because of it’s iconic text and colours, and can be recognise din the same way a logo is.

This is the before and after of one of the images I included in my double page spread. I used image adjustments on photo shop to make the image look brighter and I used contrast to make my models features stand out. It makes the image look more professional and to a magazine standard. The lighting gives the photo the ‘glossy’ magazine look which I am aiming for.

The logo for the magazine I made on photo shop I decided to put an image of a lipstick in place of the ‘I’ to make the logo fun and girly which fits the genre of my magazine. I bevelled the text to make it look more professional than just basic flat text, it also made the logo stand out

You can see here how I used columns for my text, I did this by using a template and removing it once the text was completed. It is part of the common conventions of a music magazine to use columns for organisation of the text as it makes it easier to read and look professional. Also I looked into the correct font size carefully, most double page spreads include small text fonts of 12pt. Using font this small makes the subtitles and captions stand out more also.

RULE OF THIRDS, models eye line is in the top third.

I included the top 3 social networking sites Facebook Twitter and Instagram on my front cover to show that the magazine is involved in media convergence which is a successful way of marketing.

To get proportions right I used the shape tool to map out where my text and image will go.

Colour Scheme – Contents Page

I used these pastel colours because they are feminine and girly which matches my niche target audience, these colours are also vibrant and positive which will make the reader want to read on and the text and images on the page stand out.

I was going to use a single coloured column for the contents text but then decided on this design because the page was beginning to look boring and too simplistic with lots of block colour so I felt this broke the design up a bit and was clear in indicating the page numbers and articles.

I used an image of Lips in my masthead for the double page spread because it matches with my girl band’s name ‘lipstick’ and it’s girly because it’s linked with makeup and femininity, which links to my target audience so will be of their interest. I altered the shape of the test to make it look like it’s jumping off the page which makes it eye catching for the reader.

Use of columns on my double page spread follows the conventions of a magazine, columns are useful in making the text look organised and clear to read.

I made sure to include a pull quote into my double page spread text as it stands out to the reader on first glance and makes them want to read the full article.

Image 1

Image 2

I changed the layout of this part of my double page spread because I felt image 1 was too sharp and didn’t look right, so I changed it by moving images and the masthead around and erasing the edges of the image of the model slightly.

This contrasts from the whole page design making it stand out to the reader well and catch their attention which is the desired effect as it’s a competition with a chance to win a prize, an offer readers wouldn’t want to miss.