The Final Product

This is the final product.
The overall feedback from my target audience is that the front cover was very appealing and would definitely make them buy the magazine. The contents page with improvements seemed to follow on well from the cover and was much better. The double page spread was interesting and the design innovative. One person, Chris, 17, said "I really liked the front cover and contents page, and the double page spread was different and yet seemed like it could still be part of the same magazine." Overall, it seemed a good product.

Research for Main Task

This is the front cover I deconstructed in my reasearch for my main task.


Masthead creates brand identity.
Long shot- he is looking directly at the audience implying confidence.
There is no more than three fonts used to created continuity across the page.
It’s clearly aimed at people in their twenties who enjoy music, possibly more aimed at males.
There is a lure which gives an insight as to what is inside. The quote is in capital letters which helps to catch the audience’s eye and connotes in importance and makes it seem like it is being shouted by the speaker at the audience.
The bar code is at the bottom with the price, website, issue date.
The coverline is White-on-black making it stand out and the question mark makes it rhetorical, making it interact with the audience.
The banner appeal to target audience who would know the band.
The masthead is simple and blunt, implying the magazine is blunt. The strapline is like a motto for the target audience. The banner is in the sweetspot so the audience will see it first which effictively target an aduience who know the band 'Razorlight'.

Other cover I look at include: NME, Kerrang, and The Word:
































Through studying these magaizines, I learnt the codes and conventions used by real music magazines, which I can now employ in my own work.

Planning for Main Task

This was the brainstorm I created to produce ideas for my main task. I used it come up with the eventual title of my final product(LMFAO), to decide the genre I would cover with my magazine(urban dance music) and the audience I would target (16-19 year old boys from all classes and all ethnicities).


















These are some of my original images.

This was quite a straightforward photoshoot and the blue tint came naturally due to the weather on the day which was very helpful.

This photo I duplicate and place a second copy at an angle to create the effect of therer being more than one shot and make them look like real photos.












I chose this image of myself as editor because I believed it suited the image of the magazine more as cool, sophistciated and streetwise.












This was the hardest photoshoot because, other people who were meant to be in it, didn't show up and we had to draft in a third actor to complete the shoot. Also we could not shoot at the original setting as the lighting there was so bad that no one could be seen in the photos. This is why I edited out the background. This image I later used in my double page spread. I used photoshop to remove the background.

I cropped this image and scaled it down for my double page spread, and I also did this with the next image and another one.

All other photoshoots were successful and straightforward.

Preliminary - Planning and Final Product

This is the plan I created for my preliminary contents page.



















This is the plan I created for my preliminary front cover.






















This is the front cover I created for my Preliminary task based on my plan.
























This is the contents page I created for my preliminary task based on my plan.























These are some of the original images I took to create my preliminary.

Research for Preliminary

This is the front cover school magazine I looked at when doing research for my preliminary.

There are coverlines, a masthead and a banner. There is not much to attract the viewer's attention in this piece. The font used is serif and very formal, there is only one photo and one font used. The coverlines and banner tell us a little bit about what's inside.






















The contents page is no better, with only one small phot of the editor and a grid for the information it is fairly formal and boring. It is also not very interactive with the audience and the language used is quite impersonal.

New Contents Page after feedback

After receiving feedback on my contents page, I decided to amended it.



I decided, that due to feedback, my contents page needed to be improved to improve continuity most and to make it look better in general. I changed the colour scheme to match the colours used in the front cover, which I found were blue, red, white and black. I knew that by using these colours I could successfully create continuity between the front cover and the contents page. Therefore I have improved the continuity of the contents page using the pre-existing colour codes on the front cover.

Feedback on Cover and Contents

I went round to six different people from my target audience to get feedback from them about what thaty thought of my front cover and contents. My target audience was 16-19 yr old boys.

Ben - 17
Front Cover: "It's really good, I really like the stamp effect."
Contents: "It's alright but the front cover's better."

Chris - 17
Front Cover: "It's really professional-looking, but not my sort of thing."
Contents: "This is not that great, I can't read the text."

Charles - 16
Front Cover: "It's amazing!"
Contents: "Not so amazing."

Dan - 17
Front Cover: "I would buy this magazine if this was the front cover."
Contents: "This is dissappointing, it doesn't live up to the promise of the cover."

Jeremiah - 16
Front Cover: "I thought this was a real magazine, it's quite good, really authentic."
Contents: "This doesn't lool like it's part of the same magazine, a bit of a letdown."

Leeon - 17
Front Cover: " It's alright, I quite like it."
Contents: "This is horrible, really bad."

All in all, I think I was given reasonably good feedbaack, but it seems I need to improve my contents page to a similar standard of my front cover.