- This is the first take of my article. As you can see there are quite a few problems with this.
- Immediately, you can see there is a HUGE space underneath the title and the first part of the article (circled in white in case you missed it). I had planned on filling this gap in but it became to be a bigger problem as the original plan of getting a picture of a tour bus wasn't really possible as, unfortunately, I do not own my own personal tour bus.
- Another point is that the article is not written in columns, which is a often used convention of magazine articles. I did this to challenge these conventions to be a little bit different, but it didn't go so well..
- The title of the piece was another thing I decided I didn't like on this first take. It wasn't so much the actual title itself, it was predominately the font I used. I felt it didn't match the style of the magazine.
- This is a final version of my article. As you can see I decided to change quite a few things on it.
- Firstly, you'll notice that there isn't a HUGE gap right at the very start, instead I decided to change the layout slightly and edit a picture of the full band with a home made film strip, as a sort of collage of other photos of the boys, to add more decoration and variety.
- I've also changed the article itself to be written into columns, which has made the layout just look so much better than the first take. I did, however, keep the theme of the questions from the interview in blue and the answers in white to make it clearer to the audience which was which and also what format the article was in.
- The title has changed. I decided to make it a bit longer and a bit more subject specific so the audience are definitely clear on who the interview is about exactly.
- I've also decided to add a bit of a personal touch on this page as well, by making it look like the person featured in the article, Curt Rollo, has signed the bottom of the page right next to his picture. This also solved the problem of having another HUGE gap in the corner of my double page spread!
- On the left is the first take of my contents page. Initially I wanted to have a double page spread as the contents, but I found, as I was completing it, that there wasn't enough to fill both pages, so I switched to a single page and I feel this works better.
- My favourite part on this piece, which has been a part throughout, was the letter from the editor.
- When doing this I decided to make a piece of lined paper on photoshop and then use a font that looked like handwriting to make the letter look more personal. This would also be a feature that would last throughout all of the magazine issues.
- To the right is the final copy of my contents page. I changed it to a single page as I thought the double page spread wasn't going to look as good.
- I stayed with the letter from the editor idea and the picture of the editor with it, to add a personal touch.
- The competition part of the piece was done as a blue box to make it stand out. It was a simple box drawn with the details of the competition written inside. Simplicity at it's best. I think this was really effective.
- This is the first draft of my front cover. As you can see, there is some definite work to be done here.
- The picture is of very bad quality, if I'm going to be honest, even editing wouldn't be able to fix that.
- At this point I decided that using a different cover model would be better than trying to edit this one and spending more time on this than was necessary.
- This picture was definitely the better choice. The reasons for this are that:
*-- Without a doubt this is a much better quality photo.
*-- The model is more attractive than the previous model, and has a much better look and appeal about him. Its a lot more phesable for people to want to be like this model than possibly the other one.
*-- The pose for this model is much easier to work and works much better with the rest of the layout on the front cover.
*-- The pose also gives a much better feel of the model being a big name star as he is in a more powerful stance.
- This is the first take of the actual photgraph used for the front cover.
- The reason I didn't use this one is because the lighting was wrong. Making the picture too dark to be able to use.
- Also the angle of the camera was in the wrong place for what I wanted. You couldn't see enough of the model's face and the face he was actually making wasn't good enough for the front cover.
- Take two, and the picture still wasn't quite right. The model's face is too far over so it cannot be seen properly, which wasn't what i wanted.
- Also, I decided to change the way that he was facing, so I could have him looking up towards the title of the magazine, almost as though he is acknowledging it.
-The final take. This is the actual picture I used at the front cover and I really like this photograph.
- The reason I chose this is because you can see practically all of the model's face and outfit and the stance shows attitude and power.
- By using this picture it also made it alot easier for me to edit it as the lighting was perfect so there wasn't much editing to do with it.
- Going back to the final edit. The colour scheme has been kept to very simple and contrasting colours.
- By using red, blue, black and yellow I have made the text stand out more from the background. I've also added a shadow effect to also help it stand out.
- I got the idea of using these colours from Q magazine, which is featured in my previous blog, Music Magazine Research, they also use a similar colour scheme and it works because it has remained their colour scheme throughout their many years of production.
- In the tags on the front cover I have popular bands and gigs that people would know and recognise in order to entice my target audience. I've also used recent events such as Michael Jackson's film release.
