Planning

This is part of planning which explains the genre, my target audience, what I'd like to include on my front cover, contents page and double page spread. I have also came up with some ideas for my cover lines and contents page.

These are images taken from a Jake Bugg gig I went to on the 19th October 2013 which I intend to use for my contents page; I still need to select which images I want to use for definite and edit them in photoshop. Each of the images do not vary in types of camera shots, I mainly took long shots due to my position in the crowd.

These are images taken from a Superfood gig in Southampton on the 10th October which I, again, intend to use for my contents page and I still need to chose certain ones and edit them in photoshop. These images vary in camera shots compared to the images from the Jake Bugg gig; these images are vary from mid-long shots, mid-shots and mid-close ups. As these images are taken closer to the stage, these are most likely to be more suitable for my contents page, compared to the Jake Bugg images, because there is no crowd blocking the band.

Here is a list of ideas of names for my magazine; I simply brainstormed ideas that related to my chosen genre to select an appropriate name.

These are the design ideas for my masthead; I downloaded fonts from dafont.com and I described why I chose those specific ones. 

This is the first layout design for my front cover; from my research I saw that most front covers are not completely filled up nor do they look very busy so I kept the design simple.

 This is the second, alternative layout design for my front cover; I kept similar in the way that it doesn't look extremely busy but I decided to place the cover lines all on the left side of the front cover instead of on both sides like the previous design. I also chose for this one to have extra images on the cover unlike the first design to be anchored by the cover lines and so readers could have more of an insight into what the magazine includes.

 This is the first layout design for my contents page; from research of existing magazines, I saw that a lot of them use a variety of images, including live and staged shots, with one main image which relates to the main feature article, so I arranged images over the page, each with a page number and anchorage,which I saw to be a generic convention. I also saw that the majority of contents pages include a subscription box in the corner so I decided to use one for my magazine. As well as this, I took inspiration from the new NME layout for the page numbers and decided to place a small semi-circle in the middle, at the end of the page to place the page number in to give the contents page a more professional look.

This is the second layout design for my contents page; I followed the same ideas that were in my research, i.e. laying out the page listings in columns, variety of images and the use of a subscription box but I simply rearranged where I put the images, page listings, date/issue number etc.

I'm using Serif Page Plus to create my artefact; in my layout planning I chose to add a page number inside a shape at the edge of the page where people usually turn it and I used the logo studio feature on this programme to create the shape. I decided to not use the shape and simply placed the page number in the same place on its own.

Whilst creating my contents page, I decided to try different fonts for the title in a different colour to vary the text as I thought it would look too simple and bland if I stuck to the same colours and fonts.

This is a  print screen of the progress of my contents page; it shows before I decided to change the fonts by making some words bold in my 'features' box. I also decided to change where I placed the page number and logo as I thought it looked more professional this way, as well as discarding the idea of a subscription box as I didn't want to follow the conventions of most existing printed magazines. I also abandoned the idea of placing the magazine logo and page numbers on the side of the page as it looks more professional following the normal codes and conventions of placing them at the bottom of the pages.

This is the first, starting draft of my double page spread. The black box at the top of the page is placed there for when I have decided on a stage name for the feature artist, it just allows me to work around that now. At the moment, I am just writing the article without focusing too much on the fonts and colours as I will edit it after I have finished including the interview.

This is a  print screen of my finished feature article; I have changed the font and font size from the one on the previous print screen and decided to change the format of my article. Originally, I was going to layout the interview as a question and answer article, but I decided to discard that idea and merge the questions with the responses, i.e. similar to the way NME layout their double page spread interviews.

This is a print screen of the final edit of my double page spread text. To follow the codes and conventions of music magazines and their double page spreads, I decided whilst planning mine that I would start the article with the starting letter being a larger font and different colour font to the rest of the text, as many other feature articles do. To do this, I made the font larger and a different colour, I then decided to use the 'drop cap' option in the style bar to automatically make the first letter and first few words larger, which made it more professional looking.

This print screen shows the starting point of my front cover. I have started to add cover lines to my front cover, working on the fonts an the font colours; when I have finished the cover lines and worked on my images for the cover, I will adjust the colours to what suits the main image. I've used the style option for text to create the different styles of the same font so the front cover does not look too untidy; this also follows the codes and conventions from my research of existing products as many of them use the same font but in different styles.

This print screen shows more progress of my front cover; I decided against having different colour fonts for specific words and bolded them. I've also placed a puff in the top right-hand corner of the front cover - the red fill is temporary to just have an idea of what it will look like, I intend to change the colour as the black and white fonts look too simple.

I decided to change how the features were arranged by placing each into its own text box so I could edit it to which size I wanted and means that the text looks more separated and less bulky. I also decided to place black boxes under the page numbers to, again, separate the text more so it is easily distinguishable.



Here is a print screen of further progress of my front cover; I decided to change the colours of certain words and the puff to the colour that I used in my double page spread to show a continuum through the magazine. I also decided to add a banner at the bottom of the cover as it looked bare, it also gave me the opportunity to include more cover lines for the magazine.

Here is a print screen to show the progression of adding photos to my product. I used 'cutout studio' on Serif PagePlus to cut out the unnecessary background from the original image and then continued to rearrange the size of the image so it fitted my double page spread feature, shown below:

This shows the progression of my front cover; I decided to place some of my masthead underneath the main image because I had seen in my research that well-known magazines don't need to have all of their masthead showing because it looks iconic, so I thought it would be a good idea to do this for mine.