Double page spread first draft.

Music magazine contents page.

For my contents page, I kept the blue writing on a black background or vice versa house style, and also used another star in the background. I used Photoshop's capabilities to create an exact replica of the title and the surrounding fatures, so they are in the exact same precision on this page as they are on the front cover, although I did change the word "magazine" for "contents" for obvious reasons. I would like to have time to edit the top right picture, as it's in front of a blue screen, but as I ran out of time I instead made it out to be a backstage, behind curtain scenario, which I hope works. I had a little empty space underneath contents which was perfect for a picture, but I couldn't think of anything suitable, which is why I saved my front cover as a JPEG. and used that to fill the space, which is something I would change if I had the chance.

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).