For Unit 1 we were set the task and told that we would be
designing our own double page spread’s and magazine covers for a specific
audience of your choice, for example I chose to do a music magazine so my
target audience was teenage music listeners. This sounded like a fun but
challenging task to undertake, it was challenging at first but first after
doing some research into it and splitting it down into the different stages
needed for making magazines it wasn’t as difficult as I first thought. I based
my magazine on NME magazines because after looking at these they inspired me to
follow through in some of the key features I used in my final piece. NME is also
linked at younger teenage readers so I thought this linked in well with the
task we were set to start with on creating a double page spread and a magazine
cover for a teenage audience.
Before we started our task set in creating out own magazine
we made an artist copy of an already made one. I chose to do an artist copy of
the NME magazine as I thought it linked well with my initial idea and was also
a music magazine. For this task we had to use the programme ‘InDesign’, this
programme was really useful because it is very straight forward to use and uses
columns, pictures and text which are needed for creating the ideal looking magazines.
The first step I took was to recreate the NME logo and all the writing which
consisted on the front cover. To get the perfect matching font I had to scroll
though dafont searching for a similar looking one, when I finally came across
one I then had to stretch and kern this to make final adjustments to make them
match exactly. This was the most labour intensive part of the remaking of the
magazine cover. My next step was then to recreate the picture used on the
magazine cover, I did this my taking Angus, Kes, Greg and Mike outside to find
the correct backdrop needed for the cover and then matching them back to the
original cover to make sure they looked the same and were in the right
positions. This took a good 20 attempts to do so I could get the perfect
matching cover. After finishing remaking this magazine cover I then realised
how labour intensive it was to undertake and how there were lots of different
steps to achieve the perfect magazine cover.
My original idea was to have a cartooned version of kes
posing looking into the distance on my front cover as I thought this would look
different compared to other music magazines and make it stand out on the shelf to
attract buyers. I first did this by researching into cartoon drawing of people and
looking at the different sorts of them, then finding the best bits and incorporating
them into my magazine itself. I then took a picture of kes and then started messing
around distorting some of his featured on photoshop and also adding different
features too him. These looked alright at this point but I didn’t feel like
they would suit a magazine cover. I then decided to start trialing and messing
around with magazine logo’s, I first looked at different magazines logo’s which
included NME, Q and Mojo and looked at the different styles they in cooperated
into their design. I decided to take the boldness out of the NME design and use
that in the ‘UP’ bit of smashUP as it is all in capital letters. I then took Q’s
catchphrase idea where underneath the letter Q it says ‘The World’s Greatest
Music Magazine’ and then tried to come up with my own version for my magazine
which had to be catchy. I decided to go for ‘The Music Specialist’ as I thought
this stood out and people would then automatically pick up the magazine because
apparently this magazine is ‘the Music Specialist’.
Half of my original idea was very successful and this was
the magazines logo and I decided to use this in my final piece magazine as I thought
it went really with the topic of magazine I have picked and the catchphrase underneath
the words ‘smashUP’ worked really well and would also look good in my final
piece. On the other hand my cartooned distorted pictured of Kez I made didn’t
work very well because I didn’t feel these suited the ‘music’ magazine topic
and were more suited to an arty kind of magazine. Also I thought the distorted pictured
were a lot different to the kind of magazine covers that for example NME, MOJO
and Q use every week.
When planning out my magazine cover and double page spread I
found it very hard on deciding what sort of colour pattern should run throughout
it. I wanted the magazine to be able to stand out off the shelf and make people
want to pick it up and read it, this meant I had to use bright colours but not
that bright that people wouldn’t pick it up so I had to be careful not to go
over that over the top. After trialling lots of different colours I then decided
to stick on the red/orange part of the colour spectrum because there are very
warm happy colours so it would make people pick up the magazine as well as
maybe reminding them of the summer which is especially important when aiming a
magazine at a teenage audience.
For my final piece I used the smashUP logo that I came up
with after my pre-drafting as I thought it went really well and suited the
magazine perfectly. As I explained in my last paragraph I picked red/orange
colours because they are very warm colour and are very appealing for the
teenage population as they are very bright, bold and in your face as well. For
the background photo I organised a photo shoot at college where I had to set up
the lighting to the optimum positions needed for the perfect photo and shadow. This
took a while to figure out but when they were correct I positioned Kes in a
variety of different positions where I then took around 150 pictures of him so
then I could pick through and get the ideal photo needed for my magazine cover
and double page spread. After picking out the picture I wanted to use I then
uploaded this onto photoshop where I made any tweaks needed, for example the
removal of any blemishes on his face or by changing the levels on the picture
to get the perfect picture. For my double page spread picture of Kes I then
went further and blended in a grunge texture to add more effect and also added
a few light multicolour sunspots to the picture for added effect. After I was
happy with both the pictures I added the logo to the picture using photoshop as
well as a couple of pull quotes along the side and down the bottom of the
magazine cover. To add some hand drawn elements to this task I made the barcode
by hand using the ink brush and then scanned it in to the computer and resized
and added it to the magazine cover. After this I just tweaked different bits of
the cover and dps until I was entirely happy with it.
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