Feedback from my teacher

I showed my teacher (Mr.Gallop) my music magazine today. I showed him all the research and planning I had put into the magazine. He suggested moving the picture on the font cover up into the middle of the page. I tried this out and showed friends and family to see if they preferred the picture at the bottom of the page or the middle of the page. Most of them chose the picture to be at the bottom of the page so I decided to go with my audience's opinion. I did take Mr.Gallop's advise onboard though, instead of filling in some empty space with the picture, I used colourful subtitles instead. We both agreed that this looked a lot better than it did.

Some advise he gave me on my double page spread was the space next to the picture made both pages look a bit odd. I knew what he meant as I could see the dead space as well. We came up with a few ideas on how to fill in the space. They were to take a new picture, add some text into it or to make the picture bigger. I wanted to change the picture as I believe this was the best solution. I liked the effect of the band walking away from the camera so I didn't want to change that. Instead, I went through the pictures I took that day and found one where the picture has the same effect but makes the picture stand out more.
                                                            
This is the picture I am thinking of changing the picture to. It looks   similar but I believe the band doesn't blend into the background as much as the other one did.                      

Future and marketing for my Music magazine

If I decided to place my magazine in the music magazine market, I would definitely keep my target audience the same, as the teenage age group are the most interested in keeping up to date with the latest songs so they can discuss it with their friends. As teenagers talk about music a lot and where they got their songs from, my magazine will receive free advertising which is word of mouth. I would try to save as much money as possible to start with and only use this technique. When my magazine starts to get more popular I will then start to use other marketing techniques like adverts on television.

If my magazine had a team working on it, I believe the future would be bright. This way, I don't have to do all the work myself and have different ideas and opinions to pick from to improve my magazine. If I carried on making this and my marketing technique worked, my magazine would be quite successful as there is not a lot of competition. Music magazine readers will usually pick up a magazine which looks good, so if I make the front cover look urban and eye catching then hopefully this would make the future bigger for it.

My draft double page spread

For my double page spread, I wanted to make it relevant to the earlier pages in my magazine, so I decided to talk about the band who feature on the contents. I think this is a lot better than putting a random double page in my magazine as it makes it look more like a magazine and less like a couple of pages thrown together. I was looking at double page spreads used in magazines and I think the most effective ones were the ones that had one article spread over both the pages. I wanted this in my magazine as this would prevent the magazine from being too wordy, make it more spacious, more attractive to the eye and give more space for pictures. If I was to use this technique, I would have to make sure I respect the crease seperating the pages in the middle. If I didn't, I would have either text or a picture ruined due to the fact a huge fold will be going through it. To respect the fold, I will leave a little bit of space either side of it. I will do this so the fold doesn't ruin the page and so it makes the double page look neat and tidy.

I wanted a slightly brighter background than I've used in the contents and the front page because these pages have to sustain a reader's attention instead of just capturing it for a couple of seconds. I believe the background will attract the audience to the page so they don't immediately turn the page over and then the pictures and the text will then become the attraction. I obviously didn't want it too bright as this would have made the text and the pictures look less effective and make the double page spread look a lot less attractive.

To make the double page spread even more related to the contents, I used the same colour scheme and the same fonts. When comparing the pages together, it makes the contents and the double page spread seem related and I believe this helps make my magazine look a lot more professional. I also wanted a banner adverstising the band's songs and where to find them. I decided to make it the same colour as the text, which I believe didn't take too much attention away from the contents on the double page spread which is exaclty what I wanted. Obviously I wanted it to attract some attention or it would have been pointless to have it, so making the size of the banner bigger did the job well.

I got some family members, staff from school and some pupils to analyse my double page spread. The improvements I could have made to make it better were:

• Less white space
• More effects on the pictures
• Mix up of text styles

My draft front page

This is my front page for my music magazine. As this is the first page people look at and are attracted to, I wanted the picture to be large and to give away the theme and genre of my magazine which is urban/pop. I believe the boy band gives the impression that this magazine is pop and urban based. The problem with this picture is the boy band is at the bottom of the page. This would normally be fine, but apart from when my magazine is in magazine rack, you will only be able to see the top half of the page. To help make the top half of the page more attractive to attract more of an audience I decided to add an interesting colour scheme.

Usually, magazines have a certain colour scheme and stick to it especially on the front cover. Instead of using the normal colour scheme, I wanted to have a bit of change. I tried out lots of different colours but none of them really worked as all the attention was drawn to the bright colours of the hoodies the boy band are wearing. I tried out some of the effects photoshop had to offer, and I found the perfect tool for my problem. This tool allowed me to copy the colour from the hoodies and place it into the font. I am really happy with the colour scheme now, as the picture immediately attracts the eye and then you are drawn to the subtitles as they share the same colour to show they relate with each other.

I chose to have a lot of brick wall in the background of my picture because I believe it has a really good urban feel to it. This will make the audience become interested in not only the writing and picture on the page, but also the background which I think is important as it can capture the whole interest of the reader instead of just the important bits.

I wanted to keep the title short and snappy so it's easy to remember and catchy to say. I also had to make the title relevant to the rest of the magazine or else there is no point in having a title at all. I went for the title "M&F" as it's short, snappy and easy to remember. This stands for music and flow so it tells the audience what the magazine is about and what type of music it is for. I then picked some teenagers to come and evaluate my front cover and the most common piece of feedback was the misunderstanding of "M&F". Nobody knew what it meant and they thought it was irrelevant to the rest of the magazine. To prevent this, I put the meaning of the title in a smaller font underneath it so everyone can see what it stands for. I then got a different group of teenagers to evaluate it and nobody mentioned anything about the title.

My draft contents page

After editing the picture to my liking I wanted to test out all the fonts and colours to see which ones would look the best. In the end I chose the font "plane crash" to be my title as I think it stands out a lot more than all the rest of the text on the page, I wanted this and the picture to be the first thing anyone looks at. I downloaded this font from a website called 'DaFont'.

For the page references, I wanted to go with a smaller and different font so it wouldn't attract immediate eye contact as I want my picture and title to do that. I went with the font "Silom" for this as I believe it has an indie/urban look to it which would suit my magazine. I also chose this as it was the most popular font with the teens I asked. To do this, I put lots of different fonts onto a page and asked a sample of teenagers from school to rate which one was the best. I did this as my magazine's main target audience is teenagers so I thought it would be best to let them decide which one they would rather see on a magazine based for them.

I wanted the band name at the bottom of the page so everyone reads it last, and so everyone knows who they are. This had to be put somewhere on the page or else people would start to question who they are and why they were there. I didn't want a whole paragraph explaining who they were so I thought their band name would tell everyone that they are a band and that's how they're related to music.

I tried to keep my contents as simple as possible due to the fact that teenagers only like to read the bits that interest them. So having lots of words on a page which is only suppose to show them where the interesting bits in the magazine are would probably just put them off reading the magazine. I chose the colour scheme for the font to be black and blue as I think it suits the whole urban style to the magazine and stands out well on the black and white background. I chose two colours as one colour can get repetitive and boring to look at, so I thought I'd mix it up with two colours that stand out.

My contents idea

I decided to have a photoshoot today and decided this is going to be the picture for my contents page. I wanted a band for my contents page as I believe it will look the most effective. One of the reasons I chose to put these two in the band is because they had the right clothing on to match my indie/pop magazine. I think this is very important as the wrong style could make my magazine look like it doesn't have a specific genre and could turn people off. I also chose these two for my contents page as I didn't want my magazine to be male dominanted. My front cover is all boys and I want my magazine to appeal to both genders, so I believe putting a girl in it will make the magazine more appealing to girls as well.

I wanted them to sit down with their arms resting on either side of the i-Pod speaker as I believe it made it look like music is the key part of the band, and the reason why they're together. Another reason I wanted them to sit down is because it gives the background more white space. I wanted white space in the background so I could put the writing on it without it clashing with the colours of the subtitles or taking away any attention from the picture. I wanted to shoot my picture here as I think it has a fantastic urban look to it which is excatly what my magazine stands for.

The picture above was edited in photoshop as I wanted to add some certain effects. I was worried that the picture of the band wasn't clear enough, so enhanced the picture a little bt so the colours were more visble and made the background around them black and white. I think this will look best as colours on a plain boring background will jump into eye contact a lot more easily. This will also help the text I will soon be adding onto it, as it will help the font and the colours seem bigger and bolder which will make the page a lot more attractive to look at.