Final Front Cover Evaluation 2

The target audience for my magazine was male and females varying ages between 16 and 21. The income brackets being c-b1. My magazine was mainly aimed at students (school/college/university) and so most of them wouldn't have full time jobs, this is represented through the pricing of my magazine. It is not very expensive and is affordable for people with small part time jobs and even for people getting EMA. In my opinion this is important as a high price can deter a younger target audience as they cannot afford to spend money on magazines.

My target audience are a social group that are heavily passionate about rock music and go to gigs regularly. This is represented through the sub-heading on my front cover; including 2010 festivals and gig reviews. (Also the stamp on his hand shows attendance of a local music venue and so they may recognise this stamp "tradition" and relate to his interests) This will attract people interested in live music as they will want to be recommended good bands and see reviews of gigs they had possible gone to. Also, considering the subheading includes a 'Gallows' album review then they could be interested in buying albums/CD's. Another point is that Chris Page is holding a cigerette, and although it is hard to see as the main feature title is in front of it, it shows the stereotpye of people that my magazine is trying to attract.

Even though the colour of the font on the front cover is connotated as a "girly" colour, it could represent the social group i am trying to reach to. For example, the frontman who is pictured in my main image is from a modern 'glam rock' band, and so feminine colours are relevant. Also personally i believe that a lot of the rock music magazines that are published and sold seem to have masculine heavy fonts and colour schemes (Kerrang in particular), something which i intended to steer clear of so more females (feminine girls) are attracted to the magazine. I like the softness of the colour itself but then the way it still stands out against the black and white main image.

I think my front cover represents the target social group positively and well. It indicates they are interested in the music scene and recreational gigs and venues. It represents them as sociable in the fact that they want to know what is going on within the rock music business and industry.

Final Front Cover Evaluation 1

After editing and changing small aspects of my magazine front cover, I am now satisfied with how it has turned out. I feel that the finished product now looks professional and tidy, and looks like a real rock music front cover. Here is the front cover;

My front cover doesn't really challenge the conventions of a rock music magazine, except from the fact that the page is not as busy as some covers such as Kerrang and Big Cheese (famous metal/rock music magazines). They generically have very busy pages with lots of striking subheading which stand out.
The things that are conventional are; The bar code, the sub-headings, tilted text, the banner at the top of the page about the title, the shape in the left hand corner of the page, the layout of the text, the main feature title at the bottom and bigger than the rest of the fonts.
Another point that is unconventional and not generic is the fact that the person in the main image is wearing sunglasses, he is not making direct eye contact with the audience at all. This is unusual as most of the time the person on the front makes eye contact with the possible buyer, building a relationship with them and enticing them to buy the magazine.

Double Page Spread Progress

I am currently putting my contents page and front page progress aside for the moment as I am now focusing on my double page spread. I decided to take a photo from the shoot of which the front cover picture came from and turn it black and white. Editing it on photoshop and turning it to black and white will make the theme continue from the front cover, a common code and convention of a music magazine.
Tpyically, the photo is seen on one full side of the double page spread and the text is on the other half. I thought I would use this generic convention for my article.
I have used a gradient edit on the photo using photoshop, this makes a nice soft link/line between the two pages.
The big tilted font is a common convention of a rock music magazine as the font itself is very loud and in your face, representing the music.
When writing out the actual article and putting in bold quotes, i will do them in a purple colour because this follows on from the theme of the front cover. ( the text in the upper right hand corner will be changed to a purple colour also as, after looking at it properly, it does not stand out enough)

Contents Page Progress

When first doing my contents page I wanted to have a funky looking background, my initial idea was to have pink leopard print which runs along with the 'glam-rock' theme of the magazine itself/main feature/front cover. Although after trying out what this will look like, I changed my mind:


I thought this looked quite immature and doesn't really suit the target audience of Trash (males AND females).
I still liked the idea of having a kind of border around the white page for the contents page so I tried out colours that relate to the front page theme:



Although, I still thought these didn't look right and was not the look i was really looking for. So I began to create my contents page on a plain white background, here is what it looked like when I first started it:


I like the prospects of this style and I think I will stick with it for my final idea, though i still need to finish it up and change fonts etc. My main picture on the front cover is conventionally in relation to the main feature and I would like to collect live pictures from gigs I am going to which are coming up. The current layout is very simple, but i like that.

Front Page Progress

So far I have almost finished my magazine for my rock genre music magazine, called TRASH. I still have certain things to edit and change but the I am content with the progress of the front cover, after spending a lot of time on it I began to get frustrated with what I had to change and what I wanted to keep the same so I temporarily abandoned the front cover to start off my contents page, here is a screen shot of what my front cover looks like at the moment:

I have the main codes and conventions of a music magazine included in my front cover, though some of the text does not stand out as much as it maybe should. I like the colour scheme as I think it portrays my ideas and ambitions of the magazine very well so that is something I would like to keep. The font of the title is really cool and professional looking, an individual font thing much like Kerrang's title and 'logo'.