Double Page Spread

The images I used are either of ‘Vince Fox’ or the final image is of someone else in his band. The first image is a large close up to attract readers if they are flicking through the magazine, I hope it will draw people in. The other two images I placed at the end of the article and are there to make the article look more interesting. Magazines would normally include captions on the photos, these are normally humorous or give more information to the reader. There are not many conventions to a double page spread, but I have tried to follow all of them. The text is in columns and is surrounded by the photos. I have also put quotes from the article in a larger font and placed them within the text. This gives the reader a sample and makes them want to read the whole thing. I have included other smaller things that appear in other magazines such as the page numbers, the title being in a different font and the magazine logo in the top corner.

Final Draft

On my final draft I have changed the layout so there isn't as much text all bunched together. I did this by moving the images. I have included a new image of my subject which still reflects the style of my article. Finally I made the title bigger so it stands out more and added a subtitle to make it seem as if the article is a weekly feature.

Contents Page

I have followed the normal conventions of a contents page. It contains an editorial, a list of contents in numerical order and accompanying images. Sticking to these conventions make my contents page look more professional. Even though the contents are organised that are organised all over the page which gives a sense of chaos which I think reflects the feeling of my genre.
I have used the same fonts and colours as my front cover, so there is consistency throughout my magazine. The font and colours reflect the genre of my magazine. The font is always in capitals, which suggest that it should be said loudly, and some of the letters seem to be distorted which connote noise. The colours I chose are ones that are normally associated with modern rock. The red had connotations of danger and excitement, on the title for the feature article the red is used to represent blood which is explained in the article. The grey is darker and makes the red stand out more on a shelf. I have used the same colours throughout so there is consistency and a house style.
I have arranged my images around the text so that they frame the contents and draw attention to the lists. The three images are related to one article from each section of contents. Each of these images has been manipulated so improve the lighting or background. In the first I have photo shopped a photo of blue sky behind the stage at Leeds festival. Overall this brightened the image. On the other two I have superimposed the subjects on to more interesting backgrounds, this makes them more related to my genre.


Final Draft
After audience feedback I have changed a few aspects of my contents page, first of all i have split up the contents and images using incomplete boxes, this makes it look neater and overall splits up the large amount of grey. I also made the editorial bolder so it stands out more at the top of the page.

Front cover

When I was choosing the fonts for my front cover I wanted a style that would represent the themes of my magazine. After experimenting with fonts I decided on Mister Sirloin Bt Rare The font is always in capitals, which suggests that it should be said loudly, and some of the letters seem to be distorted which connotes noise.
Vince Fox is written in Dragline which looks sketchy and hand drawn, I think this works well with the article as it is about the artist being personal. The O in Fox is actually a graphic that represents a circle of blood along with the splash at the end.
The colours I chose are ones that are normally associated with modern rock. The red had connotations of danger and excitement, on the title for the feature article the red is used to represent blood which is explained in the article. The grey is darker and makes the red stand out more on a shelf. I have used the same colours throughout so there is consistency and a house style.
The image is of the single artist “Vince Fox” normally on the front cover of a magazine the subject in the main image would be looking at the camera but I have broken this convention to make the image relevant to the article. The article is about the artist’s deep thoughts and revealing secrets or things he has never told before. To portray this, the subject is looking away from the camera into the distance as if he is in deep thought. The image is large so the magazine stands out on a shelf and the face of the subject is framed by the other images and subheadings. The other two images are connected to and article about guitarists so obviously had to contain guitars. At fist the images were too bright and didn’t look right on the dark cover, so I lowered the saturation of them, so the colours were less bright, they compliment the overall effect of the dark cover.
To make my front cover look as professional as possible I have tried to stick to the conventions that magazines usually follow. The main things most magazines usually follow are, the masthead at the top with a large image taking up most of the page underneath, and surrounding subheadings that give information about the contents of the magazine. All of these aspects should reflect the tone and theme of the magazine and are all used to draw the reader in, and to make it stand out on a shelf next to other magazines. I have followed these conventions and as a result the cover looks professional. The only convention I broke was the subject not looking at the camera but I merely twisted this convention to make it fit round my article.

Image Manipulation, Drafting and Analysis.

After my audience feed back I discovered that some of my images needed to be improved, the two points that needed improved was some images were too bright and didn't fit in with the overall style of the magazine or the backgrounds to the images were boring and didn't reflect the style I wanted. To manipulate my images I used Photo shop CS4.

This original image was too bright and the colours were too natural, when placed on the front cover it stuck out too much, as the background was dark. So to improve the image I started by lowering the saturation so making the colours less bright, this turned the dark blue to black and made the dark edge around his guitar thicker. I think this fits in with my style and makes the guitarist look more like a rock singer rather than a folk singer. The picture still didn't look right on my front cover so I removed the background and left it blank. This made it look much more like a photo shoot rather than a man on the street.

On this image I had the same problems, it was on the front cover but was too bright. The main problem was the bright light coming from the left of the image. Again I lowered the saturation so the light was less bright, this made the image darker and overall look more sinister.

I didn't like the background of this picture as it contains my wardrobe and a large shadow so I changed it. At first I made the background plain white but decided this was quite boring and wanted to make it look like it wasn't taken in a bedroom. To do this I erased the background and inserted another layer, this layer was an image of a street, this makes the image more realistic and maybe as if she has been playing on the street. Other artists who have been busking to become famous may relate to this. Once I had inserted this into my magazine I asked for more audience feed back. And I was told that even though it looks good the image still looks manipulated so I kept it as it is but suggested that it is meant to be fake by captioning the image with, "Rose Starr, goes back to the 'streets' "

This image had the opposite problems to the other images, it was too dull and contained to much grey sky. To start I increased the saturation to sharpen the colours, I thought this made the picture look sunnier but the sky was still grey. To solve this I erased the grey sky and pasted in a blue sky. At first the image contained three aspects of Leeds festival. The stage showed the music, the crowd showed the people and the ground showed the mess. But not after manipulating the image I have added the sunshine into the connotations.

Photos

In this photo the subject is looking off into the distance as if thinking about something, which is backed up by the subtitle "We delve into the mind of rock's deepest front man". The photo suggests that he is about to reveal something and has connotations of regret and secrets. I chose this subject as he reflects the emo image which the article is appealing to, he is also wearing his normal clothes, nothing fancy so that normal people can relate to him. Finally the picture is bright but contains plain colours so that the photo isn't too bright and spoils the style of my front cover. The photo also breaks the convention of the rule of thirds as the subject of the photo is in the left of the picture, this suggests he is rebellious and doesn't play by any rules, which is what I want to put across the image. Another convention that it breaks is that the subject isn't looking at the camera, again this suggests attitude but also is releted to the title of the article, it looks as if he is deep in thought.

These are the two photos that I used on my Double page spread, One looks like he is deep in thought and the other looks like he has gotten something off his chest. The first image is mainly an introduction to the article with the subject looking happy and the other is more of an insite into the character of the subject.


These are the manipulated photos I used on the contents page. The first is of the stage at Leeds festival, I have included three layers in the picture which I think describe Leeds fest perfectly, The stage for the music, the crowd for all the people and the ground to show the mess that is made. To star the image was quite dull so I changed the brightness and Photo shopped a blue sky in the background to brighten the image even more. The second is of "Rose Starr" I tried to make the subject look more of a musician by have the guitar, hat and glasses, and standing with her hands behind her back is if to say " yeah I like making NOISE, what you gonna do about it?" and finally super imposed her onto a back ground to make her look more street. The third image is of the singer of Enter Shikari who I met at a signing. If the readers know the band they would instantly know who he was, i think this adds more variety, by having real artists rather then models.


These last two images were used on the front cover as part of a 50 greatest guitarists feature. Neither of them were planned and were taken spontaneously. The first is of a busker on the street and I caught him mid strum while performing a song. I think this adds an element of action into the image. I also think he looks very stylish and reflects the Rock n roll image with his plaid shirt and fedora. Originally his shirt was too bright and didn't look right on the cover so I lowered the saturation. The other is of my friend who I caught mid head bang while playing guitar, his swinging hair and the shiny Les Paul reflects metal style perfectly and looks brilliant on my front cover. There was a lot of light coming from the left side of the image so I lowered the exposure and saturation to improve the photo.

Photos That I Couldn't Use

These photos were taken of the stage at Leeds Festival, they would not be good in the magazine for many reasons. First of all it is impossible to tell what band were playing at the time as I was too far away from the stage and the stage is very large and dark in the image. The other problem that the crowd becomes the main focus of the picture, even though I tried to take it over the crowd line there is still a lot of people in the bottom of the image. The stage is also obscured by their hands and head.

This photo would be on the contents page instead of the other Leeds Fest photo, it is meant to show the large field of tents in the campsite. The photo shows a large part of what leeds fest is about, the thousands of campers and tents. But the photo is not clear enough at all, the image would be reasonably small on the page and the tents would be unclear and all the colors blur together.

In this photo the subject was meant to be casually leaning up against the wall but he ended up looking awkward with weird smile and his arms crossed. Over all the photo doesn't reflect the style that he is meant to represent. He is meant to be "cool" and act casual like he doesn't care if people are watching him. So this photo wouldn't work in my article or anywhere else in the magazine.


In this photo the subject should've been showing attitude which he found hard and turned more into him just looking a annoyed at the camera rather than angry at society and the labels it places upon him.

Layout Drafts.

This is the first layout I have created. The dark blue and grey look good together, and the plain grey makes the blue stand out more. I have put the mashead in a banner to make it stand out against the main image, I have also made it so the masthead is disappearing into the distance. No magazines do this at the moment, it could look good but may make the masthead harder to read when it is on a shelf in the shop. On the right alighn there are images with accompanying text to give more information about the content of the magazine. Along with the texr for the feature article the images will frame the main image. because of the banners at the top and side there is a lot of room for the main image, and hopefully it won't be obscured by too much text.


This layout is quite different to the first. The masthead is put into the corner so it doesn't obscure the image, this could mean it is too small and hard to read, but magazines like NME have the mast head in the corner and it is still a successful, popular magazine.The rest of the subtitles are in the top right corner, again this is so that no text is obscuring the image. The only text over the image will be the title of the feature article. There is also a boost at the bottom that will contain more information, while still not obscuring the image. I have chosen red and grey because my research showed they are prefferred colours, also they reflect the theme of my magazine. The grey may be dull but the red is bright and stands out even more next to the dark grey

My final layout is meant to be as simple as possible, there is no boxes and only one large image that covers the whole page. The masthead is clear and bold at the top and the image underneath will be large and will hopefully stand out on a shelf. The subheadings on the right align will overlap the image but hopefully won't obscure it too much. The boosts at top and bottom will provide and extra information that doesn't fit in the subheadings.

Contents

This is a simple layout for a contents page and is very similar to contents pages in lot of other music magazine such as Q. It follows the conventions of contents pages in that it has the title at the top, room for a editoria and lots of space for a list of contents. There is also 3 large images that would correspond to three different articles.

This grid is similar to the contents page in older Kerrang magazine, the combination of text and images in the grid give a chaotic feel which would put across the idea of noise and rock music. The only problem with this would that because there is so many images there wouldn't be much information about the contents.

This is my favourite of my drafts, and will be the one I use for my final product. The layout means there is a sense of chaos like I mentioned on the other draft but not because of the arrangement of the images there is much more room for the contents. Because there is only three large images i will have to choose photos that will grab the readers attention and encourage them to keep reading.