Front Page

This is my final product - the magazine front cover.



Initially I had decided that, because I wanted my product to be an Indie magazine, and thus a little daring and outlandish, for my colour scheme I wanted to go against the codes and conventions of music magazines by using purple, pink and red, but was told that this seemed to connote childishness or seemed "too girly": I then changed the colours to green, purple and white on the front cover - but I quickly discovered that the combination did not work well, and I received some negative comments regarding my choice. Instead, I opted to go with black, red and pink. I liked this combination used on NME magazine, but decided that, because I wanted my magazine to be aimed at women, I would use pink more frequently, instead of white,  as it gave the magazine a bit of a girly feel. I chose to use the font 'Eras Light ICT' because I felt that it looked soft and feminine, but still seemed professional - this was ideal because although I wanted female readers, I did not want to go over-the-top or too childish, like Top of the Pops magazine.

When choosing the image for my magazine it was ideal that I use a picture of an independent female - I want to show that, though the Indie genre is very male dominated, females can also have a very central role in this area of the industry: though there are a lot of female musicians, many of them are considered to be 'Pop' musicians, and I wanted to avoid this stereotype. I chose to have my artist looking upward, toward where I placed the title of the magazine - I felt that this connoted that the artist was interested in my magazine, and gave it a little bit of a "wow" factor. I also decided that I wouldn't use much text on the front cover - unlike NME or Kerrang - as I felt it made the page seem too cluttered, and I wanted the magazine to have a simplistic feel to it, as the majority of my target audience said they prefered this approach: "less is more".

I gave the mast head of my magazine a bold, black outline to make it stand out against the page, and chose to use the colour red from my scheme as it was the most noticable of the colours - it's aggressive, and grabs the attention of readers, yet also connotes sensuality and sexuality of females; I also used red for the name of the featured band in the magazine 'Giants' but some respondents felt that this wasn't as effective as the title, unless I used a different font to make it stand out more. I gave the band it's own font which "dedicated fans" would be able to recognise, as my magazine is aimed at people who are already interested in this type of music. With the direct quotation I placed in the bottom-left corner of the page, I thought it would be interesting to use the colour white so that we know it is a quotation, and so that it stands out entirely from the rest of the text - so that we notice it - and I recieved positive feedback about this decision.

I also decided that I would use the colour pink (to give the girly effect) for the other bands mentioned on my front page, so that the words would stand out and so that people would recognise these band names - again, to attract the "dedicated fans" but also to perhaps encourage people who had never heard of them to take interest.

With the layout of the page, I decided to keep it simple and conventional with the mast head in the top left-hand corner, leading down to the barcode in the bottom right-hand corner (the last place we look). The main feature is central to the page, as with most magazine layouts, and I also chose to place a direct quotation from this particular article in the corner - the positioning of this quotation is so that, hopefully, people who look at the page will remember it and become interested, as it is one of the last things our eyes are drawn to on the page.

For the image itself, I made a few small but noticeable modifications to the original image. To begin with, my subject had brown eyes, but I decided that I wanted to make her stand out and seem different by changing the colour to a bright blue - I felt that this gave the female a more desireable, 'special' look, yet also made her stand out a little bit, as I wanted girls who read my magazine to feel like they can stand out if they read this. Also, the positioning of the image allows the eyes of the subject to be in one of the most ideal positions - according to the rule of thirds. I also chose to remove any imperfections on the image, again, to make her seem glamorous, even though she looks like an average teenage girl - the way I want my readers to feel. The contrast on the image has also been adjusted to give the girl a slightly tanned look, which makes her stand out from the typical 'emo' or 'indie' stereotypical girl, giving the impression that anyone can be like this.