Peer Assessment

The feedback which I received from my class was mostly positive, only with very few minor changes to be made. I find that these changes consisted of using more subheadings which relate to the feel and genre of the magazine, so this will be one of the first changes that I go along with, as in my opinion too, there aren't many stories about what is featured within. Another comment was about the masthead, so I am going to try and make that stand out more, without taking away the effective, retro theme of the font.

Target Audience

Name: Jennifer Watson

Age: 19

Jennifer has interests in many different types of music, ranging from metal to retro. I have chosen her as one of my main target audiences because I feel as though she'd be likely to buy my magazine based on the artists featured on the cover. She's a fan of Lana Del Rey for example, and Wheatus. She likes to buy magazines regularly as she's a fan herself of this element of the media, as well as watching science-fiction films in her spare time. I am also aware that she likes socialising with friends - when she isn't revising for exams or doing general college work - who may share the same interest in music or other media, and I know that she's a fan of vintage clothes shops, which ties in with my overall theme of my layout.

Name: Lewis Graham

Age: 18

Lewis isn't the typical sort of male who would go out on a night and spend money on alcohol; he's a hardworking student. Yet he still likes to socialise with friends when he can; at social gatherings at friend's houses or on a typical day out somewhere. I have chosen him as my male target audience because he has a vast interest in music and many different genres. If I were to pick an artist from my magazine in which he likes, I would definitely choose one like Biffy Clyro, as they have this original, sometimes quite heavy genre of music. Lewis is also a fan of 'old' music as well, and I have tried to add artists from the late 90's and so forth. I find that he'd be attracted to the magazine because of the retro appeal; its colour palette is simple attracting both genders, and I have tried to make the text and fonts appeal to male and female by not having biased words and elements within my magazine.

First Draft of Magazine Cover

This is my first draft of my music magazine cover, and overall I am rather pleased with this outcome so far. I tried to make the draft as professional as possible with my knowledge of Photoshop and other elements, such as the good quality of the cover model image.
I've went for a look of originality; in my opinion the cover looks rather retro and this is the theme which should occur throughout my magazine. With this vintage style, I've made the text similar to that of Slam Dunk Festival's, like I said I may use in my mood board. The colour palette of the cover is basic, yet I think this adds to the more original and 'old' feel about it. The main colour of red has also been tied in with the border of the title as well as the cover model's lips, which gives the magazine a sense of sophistication without looking too over the top with too many colours going on all at once.
In general, I obviously plan to make this cover far better and professional than what it is, so with this, I plan to obtain more knowledge of Photoshop, perhaps test out different images as the cover model and try out different texts and font sizes to perfect it overall.

'Gradient Map' Idea

I wanted to try out different effects on my magazine cover, so for a tester I chose a random photograph of myself and used the tool ‘gradient map’, which let me choose different parts of my image and make those parts black and white. So I decided to make every part of myself like such, whilst leaving the parasol I was holding in my image in colour. I did this by using the magic wand tool as well as the lasso tool so I could select particularly difficult parts with ease. Overall, I definitely was pleased with the outcome and I am sure to use this in my overall magazine draft/finished result.

Front Cover Inspiration and Ideas

Confused with where to head next for my front cover layout, I have researched some modern magazines and logos which have a rather retro appeal throughout their looks. What attracts me most to these is the originality; I know I want my masthead for example to be in a bright red, with a rather simplistic yet old style font. Like the Slam Dunk Festival logo, I was really appealed by the quirky and original style of such; it has given me a lot of inspiration further for the look of my magazine's front cover.

The theme, I want, is definitely old rock and roll, but with a range of different artists. I find that NME and Q have this appeal in their style and layout too; they're minimalistic, but because of their choice of colours, they give off a retro vibe.

The other element which really appealed to me was the fact that most of these magazine covers have their model in a close-up shot, which emphasises their persona, so I find that I may use this in my own magazine layout.

Unwanted Draft of Magazine Cover

After choosing a suitable photograph for my magazine cover, I realised that this image would be suitable as the background had very similar colours which would be easier to edit out. So with doing so, I began to add text as well which tied in with my magazine rationale, and this I chose from dafont.com. The text I chose was something with a retro twist, which I found really blended well with the ‘Slam Dunk Festival’ logo. I downloaded this font into my texts on Photoshop so that I could use this whenever I want. I changed the colour to red so the colour was more applicable to my rationale as well. I done the same with the band’s name, and used the same font for subtle effect.

The last feature I added to this draft was the star icon on the masthead. I edited it to only have a small yellow glow around the outside of such, but I realised that it looked very unprofessional and didn’t really make my magazine look intended for an audience with a passion for rock, punk-pop music genres etc.

Overall, I don’t want to use this image, text or icon for my magazine cover, therefore I will try to find more suitable features that tie in with it even more.

TIME MANAGEMENT

From now, I know that I have to be quick and on task with my ideas; I can't simply mess around with some and then choose a random outcome that I may not like. From here, I am intending to focus fully on what makes a good magazine cover, and look at other images of my own which may come in useful for my final product.

Planning of Magazine Cover

To begin with my magazine cover draft, I used one of the images from my original magazine ones. This one stood out to me at first because it was the most relevant pose in relation to my cover rationale, and the way in which I was looking at the camera resembled ease in my opinion.

So when I began to crop the background from my image on Photoshop, I used the lasso tool as well as the magic wand tool, which I found was very useful when wanting rid of huge and needless chunks in my work. However, after cropping out the background as a starter I realised that I definitely didn't want to use this even for my first draft. The background was very hard to delete therefore the model looked extremely distorted around the edges and very unprofessional. So overall, I plan to use another image for my draft and this has helped me to realise so far that the background needs to be around the same colour for easier editing.