Throughout this post I will unpick and justify my decisions during the construction of my front cover, contents page and double-page spread. For my magazine I have done research on other magazines to help me understand what the audience of my magazine will find interesting and what they are looking for in my magazine.
The demographic audience I have decided to aim my magazine is teens to late 20's, males or females that are of a standard to low income level and in probably still in education. I have chosen this audience because I think it is a competitive group for music magazine's and because of this my magazine will have to strive to better it-self againt other competitive music magazines and will be able to use idea's displayed in other magazines.
The code's I have used for my magazine are the ones you would typically see on a magazine such as a barcode, a mast-head, front-cover, tagline, contents page etc. After making sure all the typical code's were there I have also added codes relavant to my chosen genre, rock-pop. A popular genre with people of the age I have chosen to aim my magazine at.
To create my magazine I have used the multi-media program 'Serif'.
Above is my front cover, in which I have decided to use certain codes which would be replicated from issue to issue to make my magazine recognisable to the consumer such as the colour scheme of red and black, buzz words such as "explode" and "rock bottom" which draw the audience in, and make them want to read more.
This is my final design for the front cover of my music magazine after many different stages of change to try and perfect my cover. I decided to place the masthead in the top centre of my cover, but overlapping it is my main photograph, so it does not take any attention from the celebrity's on my front cover but is also visible enough so at to make my magazine recognisable to its audience.The strap line of my magazine is the website, used as a plug to advertise the site. The masthead is the largest text on the page so that it is clear that it is the masthead and it is also in the colours of the magazine, to make it recognisable and eye catching.and stand out more.
On my front cover I have tried to use minimal text but still giving enough information to catch the eye of the consumer. I think after a lot of deliberation about what text would be appropriate and adding buzz words, I think I have achieved this goal.
My contents page has undergone a long process of fine tuning, and above is the final version. The reason I took so much consideration in my contents page is because I was trying to make it fit in with the theme of my front cover (e.g. colour and style) to provide fluidity, yet add all of the appropriate codes and information needed in a contents page such as page numbers and titles, a few images to keep it interesting to look at etc. I have also included an editors note, as I think it worked well in my previous project (my school magazine, "2 Cool 4 School"), and it gives the magazine a personal touch, helping the magazines audience address themselves with the writer.
I decided to place the contents list on the side as it is easy to read without taking up too much of the space available on the page. I also seperated the contents into different sections so that the different articles are easier for the reader to find.
When printing my magazine I experienced some diffuculties with printing the above contents page for the music magazine. When printed, through no known fault of my own, the editors photograph was of his shoes not of his face. I tried everything I could to correct this error such as cropping the photo the shoes where not even part of it but still when printed this error occured.
For my double-page spread (above) I have used a layout that I found in a 'Heat' magazine (issue 65). I think this works well because it looks attractive and because the look of it is appealing to the reader, thus drawing them in. I have been able to use a small font size to fit in all the appropriate writing onto one page. Other devises and codes I have used in this double page spread to make it recognisable and attractive as a magazine are page numbers and a large quotation taken from the interview.
