Music magazine front cover.

As you can see, this front cover is a complete change to my preliminary task in terms of a proper house style, an image taken with a lot more care and attention to detail, plus a load of information taking up "dead space", which I thought was quite important, especially after looking at other magazines such as NME and Rolling Stone which always look to make full use of any spaces they happen to have. As I mentioned in my previous post, I aimed to keep a solid house style consisting of mainly blue and blacks, and my model's shirt also helped with the house style, conveniently being blue itself. On my preliminary task I used a font that I didn't feel suited my magazine, and it took me a while to find one that I liked but also, in my eyes, worked as a font for my magazine. the problem I did face was empty space below "Tune Up" and above "Magazine", and it took me a while to figure out what I should do, since I believed adding anything else relating to what's in the magazines would start to make it look like a contents page. I then came up with the simple idea of using a selection of music notes to take up the space above "Magazine", and then also thought of using a bar of music from a song I know, and cutting it into a suitable length. Thankfully, this seems to have worked, taking up space that needed to be filled, whilst letting the front cover do it's job of just being a front cover. The outline of a slightly darker star that's behind everything was added late, as I didn't like the idea of just a plain, flat colour for the background, and adding the star gives it a slight contrast, especially with the sharp lines. Finally, I wanted to keep the blue writing instead of just using black font, so i used the slightly opaque black boxes to frame my writing, so as to make it easy to read.

House style.

For my house style, I decided I'd like to use blue as a main colour, as it's actually quite unconventional, or must be since not one magazine I read happened to use it extensively at all. I hope, coupled with a soft black and idfferent tones of blue, that it works for a magazine. For text boxes, I also used a light, slightly opaque shade of black as I thought that using another colour could ruin the effect, and also make it hard to read the text. Hopefully, my ideas worked.

Professional photography analysis.

This picture strikes me as a great shot for a front cover. I like to think that the story that accompanies this picture would be focusing just on him, and maybe a rebellious nature, emphasized by his hand gripping the microphone almost like a fist raised, and him also screaming whilst making direct eye contact.

Medium Close Up.



This photo would be best suited for a contents page, where all the different vinyl’s laid around the woman in the photo could be representing all the different contents the magazine has to offer.

For the same reasons, this photo could also be used as a front cover shot, but I personally don’t think it would be as effective.

High Angle Shot.

This picture seems to be a perfect shot for a front cover, filling whatever space it needs to with just the part of the face you can see, which is interestingly not much, with the large, blacked out glasses and the hair, possibly pointing to the subject of the photo having a sort of rock personality, just from first glance.

Close Up Shot.

 

A picture like this with all the hands reaching towards the stage could be easily stretched out across a double page spread reviewing a music festival, like Leeds festival for example. Putting the hands across the two pages along the bottom of each page would create the effect of the text being supported by all the hands, cleverly relating to “crowd surfing” which is incredibly popular at festivals and gigs.









This shot of Billy Joe was taken during one of the biggest gigs Britain's ever had for one band, and the screen behind him is used so people can see him clearly. In this shot though, it particularly like the camera man is trying to capture the huge presence the singer has, using the rule of thirds to incorporate both Billy Joe and his on screen picture, and not just one or the other.

Medium range shot.



College magazine contents page.

As with my front cover, my contents page also didn't take much effort on my part. But I did learn that even without much effort, it's actually quite easy to place fonts and pictures and wrap words around images using Photoshop, so I do believe these two pieces helped me complete my coursework pieces.

College magazine front cover.

This is the front cover I completed for a preliminary task, and as you can see it's basically a picture with a few words on it, which took little to no effort; not the best approach, I admit. The font I used has permission to be used by it's author, so that wasn't a problem, but I decided to not use the picture or title font for my coursework task (my music magazine).

List of possible contents.

I'm aiming for at least two "sections" of contents on my page, and I'm trying to get content for about 15-20 "pages" of items as I think that's long enough to make it a good magazine but not so long as it would bore the student who would be reading it.

1st section (top list);

Review of Health Week, and interviews with college students who participated.  Pages 3-4.
Interview with Student of the Month. Pages 5-6.
Prior's got Talent exclusive spread. Pages 7-10
Drama's upcoming production of Jane Eyre. Pages 11-12.

So far I'd predict that's half a page worth of contents, depending on the style and size of my font.

The next section (bottom list) could include;

Interview with a student regarding peer mentoring. Page 13.
UCAS news, final deadlines. Pages 14-15.
Results from a survey carried out to reveal if students were happy or not with the music situation in the cafeteria, and also about busses. An interview also with a student affected by the busses. Pages 16-17.
Ending on weekly announcements from any staff, and upcoming Student Union meetings, page 18.

I think this would suffice for now, and I just have to incorporate them into an actual contents page.

Ideas for college magazine.

Prior Pursglove College always has activities happening at some point in the year and even has themes for every week, with various events taking place to promote the particular theme; for instance, 2 weeks ago it was Health Week and the college organised stalls that promoted healthy eating, and hired a "Bucking Banana" for fun. Other events, such as a "Britain's Got Talent" styled talent show will shortly be held, dubbed "Prior's Got Talent". I think that this particular show would be an excellent feature as the main headline on my college magazines' front cover, and I also have the perfect idea for a photo which would go with the story as well. I can imagine that the photo will be taken and uploaded to the blog as my next post, and I'm sure whilst adding a few other lines, that would be my front cover finished. Then moving on to the contents page, I will take a picture of someone, employing the rule of thirds technique and placing them on the right hand side of the photo, so I can use the left hand side for my list of contents. The way the rule of thirds works, the reader will be immediatly drawn to the contents, and upon completing this, that will be my college magazine preliminary task completed.