2. RESEARCH
• I started this project by researching three professional magazine productions and their websites and I
researched front cover, double page spread and websites from: RWDmag, Vibe and Rolling Stone. I
talked about colour scheme, the fonts and sizes of the titles/text and the actual style of writing and how
all of this appeals to their target audience. I also talked about the overall structure of the productions
and how they are set out. I then wrote a summary evaluating what I can take from these productions
and what aspects I can use in my production.
3. PROPOSAL
• After doing my research I then wrote a proposal, where I talked about audience (what my target
audience is and how I can appeal to them), rationale (what productions I have worked on that can help
me in this project and which softwares I am experienced in already that can help me in this project),
project concept (what I will be doing in this project and what software I will be using to do this),
production techniques (what software/equipment I will be using in my production) and evaluation (how
I will evaluate my production when I am finished).
4. FRONT COVERThe picture bottom left is my practice design I made and the bottom right is my final product. I decided to keep the same colour scheme (black, white and red) as I like the appearance of these colours
together and they appeal to my target audience and the genres of Grime and Hip Hop, as red appeals more to males, which is the majority of my target audience. Also the connotations of red is danger,
energy and power and the connotations of black is death, mystery and power, and these are big parts of the Grime and Hip Hop genres. I had the same amount of information on my front covers, as I
thought any more information would make it look too crowded. I also made this information more visible and clear on my final product becasue after reflecting on my practice design I could see that the
colours of the text didn’t go well with the background colours. I added more artists’ names and alternated the colours of them to make it look more entertaining, instead of just one colour of block
writing, and it also makes it stand out more. As you can see on my practice design the masthead isn’t very exciting as no edits have been made to it apart rom the colour, so I decided to make the
masthead on my final product more exciting and so it looks more processional. I first changed the font of the masthead to ‘Aku & Kamu’ as this has a bold stand look and I then edited it, for example I
added an inner shadow, inner glow and drop shadow and in my opinion I think that this has improved the appearance of the masthead greatly. The difference of the editing on the masthead is shown
from the first screenshot of my final product compared to the last one. After reflection on my practice design I saw that the main image of the artist wasn’t big enough to cover the page so it left a big gap
between the main image and the masthead, which didn’t look very professional, so for my final product I made sure to find a picture of an artist that covered the whole page and I decided to make it
cover the masthead slightly as my research showed that many professional magazines do this. I also added a barcode, issue number and price on my final product as this is also what a professional
magazine would have. Some of the tools I have used on Photoshop to make my product are the ‘polygon lasso tool’ which allowed me to cut out the image of the artists so there wasn’t anything in the
background. I used the guidelines which allowed me to align everything up, for example the barcode with the end of the masthead, the price and the information on the right hand side, and the start of
the masthead with the issue number an information on the left hand side. As you can see from the second screenshot of my final product I originally slanted the information on my magazine, however I
decided to change this as this looked quite childish and what you would find on a children’s magazine and my target audience is more of a teenage age-group so I wanted to appeal to them as much as I
could.
5. DOUBLE PAGE SPREAD
The picture bottom left is my practice design for my double page spread I made using Indesign and I chose to keep roughly the same idea for my final product which is the picture bottom right. I chose the
structure of the double page spread for one of the pages to be a full picture and the other page to be mostly text with a smaller image, as with an equal ratio of image to text it makes it seem as if there is
less text making people more willing to read it, especially for my audience which is Grime and Hip Hop fans in a teenage age-group, where the majority of these people would prefer to read less than more. I
wanted a bit more colour in this double page spread compared to my front cover so it didn’t look the same throughout the whole magazine, therefore I kept the picture the same colour as its original image,
however I had to crop it down on Photoshop as there was a border in the image that I didn’t want. Although I did change the colours on the page on the right hand side to the same colours as on my front
cover, as I have explained in my evaluation of my front cover, the connotations of the these colours (danger, death, energy and power) appeal to my target audience (teenage Grime an Hip Hop fans). The
colour red is very eye-catching and the colour white against a black background is also very eye-catching, making people notice this design, making them focus on it and possibly want to read it. On my
practice design you can see that I have a small image of the artist in the bottom right, however I wasn’t happy with its position so in the second picture you can see I tried the design without a smaller picture
on the text page and I tried the picture in a different place (in the middle of the text) and I think this has a best position to improve appearance, as I have done this for my final product. On the software
Indesign there is a tool where you can edit the text to position itself around an image, however my attempt to do this did not work, therefore I just created a space in the text box to put the image in-
between. The font of the headline of the article is ‘Lugos’ and this is the font for all my headings in my front cover and website as well. I chose this font on ‘Dafont.com’ and installed it onto the computer
and I chose this font because I think that it has a modern look and it is not plain and unoriginal, so this appeals to my target audience more as they are from a younger generation therefore the majority of
my audience will prefer a modern look compared to an old fashioned look. For my bodytext I have chosen the font ‘Coolvetica’, and I have chosen this because again I think it has a modern look to it and also
it is quite simple to read, which is what my audience would want, as they most likely wouldn’t read if it was a difficult task. Although the font is clear to read the colours however may make it difficult for
some viewers to read, however on a larger scale, on an actual double page spread, the bodytext would be easier to read. If I was to improve my double page spread I would change the background colour to
white and change the bodytext to black as this is the traditional style of text, and likely more easy to read. Overall I am pleased with the appearance and structure of my double page spread, and after a
small reflection and revisit to other professional magazines’ double page spreads (Vibe, Rolling Stone and RWDmag) my product looks fairly similar to the professional ones.
6. WEBSITE
I made a practice design of my website on ‘Wix.xom’ and for my final product I used my practice piece and improved it greatly by added more aspects to my website. On this software I chose a
template to follow and added different items such as text boxes, videos, images and calendar dates. On my original ‘Magazine and Print’ PowerPoint I have many more screenshots from my website,
showing the progression of it and what I changed etc. However at the bottom of the page you can see five pictures, and all of these are from my finished product. I made a website plan on my
‘Magazine and Print’ PowerPoint using shapes and arrows, which was a brief template of how my website would look and what pages there were going to be. The first picture is a screenshot from my
‘Home’ page and I used this page to show what the website would contain, (music news, updates). For the masthead I used the font ‘Aku & Kamu’ (the same as my front cover) and used the same
colour as my front cover masthead and my double page spread headline. I added text boxes from the shapes menu and made the font at the top of the box larger than the bottom, so the number
would be bigger than the month, as you can see. I then researched music festivals that take place in the UK and added some to my page. I then added videos next to the festival dates and this was a
simple task as the website allowed me to search for a video on YouTube and paste it onto the page, as shown. I then added a headline for each video, for example I added the video for the artist
Drake’s new song and headlined the video “Drake’s God’s Plan Reaches #1 In Billboards”, which is an example of a news article, which is on a different page, meaning if the viewer wanted more news
like this then they would have to go to my ‘News’ page. For the background picture I searched on Google ‘Grime and Hip Hop’ and used this picture as it works very well with my product’s music
genres and shows what this website will be showing. The second picture is a screenshot from my ‘News’ page and it contains different articles and stories, such as new albums, tour dates, and festival
line-ups. I linked the title of the story/article to a page where the viewer can get this information, for example I linked the tour date article to Eminem's website, for it to open on a different tab. The
third and fourth picture is a screenshot from my ‘Music’ page. On this page I listed the top twenty songs in the Grime and Hip Hop genres and added the top three music videos on each list onto the
page. Underneath these lists I added a fake music album, as I had to use my own photography. I used a green screen to take pictures in front of and I then, using Photoshop, cut out the image with the
‘Polygon Lasso tool’ and I also edited this image using effects such as ‘outer glow’ allowing me to create my own album. After creating this I added it to the page and wrote a brief description about the
artist (me) and the album. Finally the last picture is a screenshot from the ‘Contact’ page. The email section was already on the template, however I thought it was a good touch to the page so I kept it
on and below this is contact information such as booking, management and press. On this page, along with all the other pages, I have kept the same colour scheme as my whole production (black,
white and red) from text and background images etc. as I have explained in my Front Cover Evaluation and my Double Page Spread Evaluation. Overall I think that the appearance and structure of my
website is good and looks quite professional, for example using pictures with headlines, which it what website such as Vibe and RWD have done and it also works with my target audience because
they are from a longer generation, therefore they would most likely refer to see a picture with the text rather than just block text to read. If I was to improve my website I would add more news
articles to my ‘News’ page and write more of my own articles as I didn’t have enough time to do this.
