Evaluation part 5:
My media product of my magazine title was developed by doing extensive research on different magazine titles. By researching this I discovered that the majority of music magazines title names are short and have at least 6 letters or less such as; 'Q' 'XXL' 'Vibe' 'Complex' 'Spin' 'NME' all of these names are memorable and captivating to the audience. I did most of my research online as you have to subscribe and pay for the real/full issues of music magazines. When I was thinking of names for my music magazine I firstly chose a rather long name ' Predomination' as this meant something that was dominant and overpowering which I thought associated well with my genre of music R&B/Rap, I than decided to change this name as I thought that it was too long and I did not like that way the it would position along the front/top side of my front cover, I also realised that I wanted a short name in order for my front cover to look more like a real existing text, this will also allow me more space for my image and sell lines on my front cover. Therefore I decided on the name 'DMT' which stands for domination which allowed me to still have a similar meaning within my magazine name yet have more space among my page.
Front covers:
Based upon my front cover I used NME’S front cover with Amy Winehouse featuring on the cover because I liked the layout design of the cover. As you can see they have positioned their masthead of ‘NME’ in the top left hand corner in white and a bold font, I thoroughly liked the positioning and colour of this therefore I decided to base my title and how I positioned mine upon this issue. I have used a black plaque behind my masthead of ‘DMT’ so that it really emphasises the white lettering in the title, because I can see that due to the all-black background behind ‘Amy’ it brings out the white in ‘NME’ consequently I felt that adding a small black background just underneath my title it would give it a more professional look and also would make it similar to real existing products. Additionally I like the overall image of black and white as I prefer a front cover to look minimalistic as I know personally that I am more attracted to a front cover with less text on it as it is easier on the and quicker to read, due to this I gave my image a black and white effect called ‘Agnes’ which I created on Pixlr to try and achieve this look but also to keep the graffiti effect slightly behind my model as I feel this portrays the hip-hop culture fittingly. Lastly I liked the way that Amy was standing and positioned slightly to the side with her head turned towards the camera with her eyes aimed directly at the lenses. For that reason when I was taking images of my model I took inspiration from this image and directed my model to stand with his body to the side and his head turned to face the camera. I think that this works well because it makes the audience feel that the artist is turning to face them and wants to share their story and deep thoughts with the audience. Although I had based my front cover on the ‘NME’ front cover I also added a few of my own elements to my front cover as I added three sell lines where as they have included no sell lines. I felt that even though I wanted to achieve the simplistic look, having information about the magazine on your front cover was important in attracting an audience due to the fact that it provides them with information about your magazine, it persuades and intrigues them to purchase it.
Contents pages:
Whilst creating my contents page I used two different
contents pages to use for inspiration. Firstly to the left hand side is a
contents page from ‘The Source’ music magazine which is featuring 2xChainz. I
like the way that they used a white background as a base and then inserted
their image of 2xchainz over the top of it on the middle right hand side. I
felt that this provided them with more spacing to write the page number and
text onto their page. I also think that this looks a lot neater than the
typical contents page where they have the enlarged image and the text around
the page. I tried this look out on my contents page by using a white background
on Pixlr and resizing it to however big I wanted the white base background to
be, I than added the image of my model on top of the white background and
positioned it in a similar position to the left as this way I will have just enough
space for my text. Furthermore most contents pages conventionally have ‘Contents
Page’ written at the top so when I saw the contents page of ‘The Source’ I was
instantly attracted due to the fact I liked the way they had been
unconventional and different by not including this title of ‘Contents page’
Instead they had a slogan that they use on every one of their contents page
which was ‘Master Plan’ which I like and used something similar although I wrote
a piece of text ‘The kings claim to reign’ which is about my featured artist
therefore it gives each main artist that will be featured in my magazine their
own piece of identity and slogan I also thought that the rhyming couplet of ‘Claim’
and ‘Reign’ was attracting an just simply rolls of the tongue of your audience member.
Moreover I saw that ‘The Source’ had enlarged the number that their main featured
artist will appear on to show that he is the main attraction of this magazine,
so I used this on my front cover ‘No.18’ in a dark orange colour in order for
it to stand out amongst my other page numbers. The similarities that I had used from the
contents page of ‘Vibe’ on the right hand side which features ‘Nicki Minaj and
Lil Kim’ is one of the sub headings that they have used “Departments” as I was
unsure of that types of sub headings that I wanted to include on my contents
page as when I researched music magazine contents pages I found that they were
all rather unusual. I felt that “Departments” would allow me to include any
information that would typically be on these page numbers. Skipping back to the
contents page on the left hand side, I also used one their sub headings “Features”
as this would then provide me with two main subheadings and I could than
include all the artists that I have done features on in my magazine.
Double page spreads:
The
double page spread that used for stimulation was from ‘Q’ magazine which did a
feature on Lana Del Rey. Here I saw that they used an image of Lana on the
whole of the left hand side page, which I liked therefore I used an image of my
model on the right hand side of my page although I did not enlarge it as much
due to the fact that I was including more text that they have used on the
double page spread. I also loved the way that they had enlarged the first
letter of their sentence so that it is covering almost half of the right hand
side page. Through my research on double page spread’s I found that various
issues of ‘Q’ have used an enlargements of one letter either being the initials
of the featured artists name or the start of a sentence, I have always liked
the look of this therefore I used that first initial of my artists name ‘I’ and
enlarged it but instead of putting it underneath my text I placed it on the
image of my artist as I did not want it to look exactly the same as the double
page spread of ‘Q’. As you can see they have only written Lana’s name in small
at the top by the image of her, I thought this looked neat and rather than
distracting her name from the actual text beneath they have just placed it in
small lettering at the top as a result of seeing this I realised that I wanted
the same effect and wanted my audience to be able to properly see the text that
I have written, so I placed ‘Izzy’ in the left hand side corner. ‘Q’ have only
used two small columns on this particular page about Lana where as I added a
slight element of my own as I needed three columns due the fact that I have
included a small article about my artist and an interview as well. Overall I kept
the layout design of mine similar to the one of ‘Q’ although I changed the
columns and positioning of it slightly, I honestly think that it works just as
well as the double page spread of ‘Q’.
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