Charlotte Bryne

Evaluation

Front cover

The house style of my front cover has a running theme of pink, as the contents page is also rather similar to the design of the front cover. I chose a font from the website “dafont.com” that is quite girly and informal, although at the same time looks quite chic and fun. By using the colour pink, it defines the magazine straight away to a girly audience, and as the masthead font is plain colours, it makes the magazine seem more aimed at an older teenage audience. I didn’t purposely choose to make my magazine aimed at girls, as I was trying to aim for both sexes, and wanted a quirky alternative look to my magazine. However, there is definitely room for a teenage girly magazine, as most magazines you find are rock based, or very heavy metal, and some girls who prefer softer music don’t have much of a selection of music magazines.

One of the conventions of a typical music magazine is to have main sells. The only main sells included on my magazine front cover, is the description about the new band of ’09 “Regal Dollz.” Although not very professional, or keeping to the conventions of a regular music magazine, I chose not to have the amount of main sells that a regular music magazine would consist of, as I wanted to keep the magazine quirky. By having less writing, it also draws your attention to the main image. Most of my inspiration came from the website, issuu.com, such as “BLU,” “Front,” and “Rogue,” as these magazines were unusual, and gave me a lot of different ideas to use for my front cover.

The main image is a picture of the lead of my made up band “Regal Dollz.” I chose to wear something simple, so that it wouldn’t clash with the floral background, as I didn’t want my magazine to look tacky. I chose a simple blue top, and a black jacket. By wearing this, it makes me look more sophisticated, as well as keeping in with the fashion.

My Photoshop techniques have definitely improved by working on this project. In my last project, of the CD cover, I was quite intimidated to use Photoshop, as I had never had to use it before, so my editing skills were poor, and getting the project in with the time limit, I found quite straining. However, now that I have become less of a stranger to the program, I have successfully been able to create something that is quite pleasing. I have been able to tidy up the edges around images, and can copy and paste images onto others, and have been able to work out the “layers” part of Photoshop, as it confused me before.

Contents

I have continued to use the same floral pattern from the front cover, as I wanted to keep the same theme running through the contents. It makes it more connected to the magazine, and I wanted to try and keep the same sort of idea.I had difficulty in finding the right sort of structured layout for the contents, as I still wanted something quirky to fit in with the alternative genre. I had a few different ideas, consisting of using frames, and pictures. However, I like the idea of using different shaped boxes, to contain each bit of writing for the information to go into. I used the same sort of colours for the font colour, as that of the floral background, because also I wanted it to stand out, I also wanted to colours to all merge together, to not complicate it too much, as the boxes are rather confusing and not aligned together. I wanted to try and keep the contents simple, yet eye catching, as the contents is just used as directions to the preference of what the reader wants to know about. If I had made it more full, it would’ve distracted too much, and been too complicated to understand.

I have two separate contents pages, because I didn’t think that the one was enough, as I hadn’t actually written much about what was in the magazine. I used big page numbers, to fit in the corner of each box. I think that this worked well as it is eye catching, and it is quite clear as to where each bit of information is, in the magazine.

I could’ve improved my contents page a lot, as I didn’t actually include any images in this part of the magazine.I was concentrating too much and the whole “square” structure, that I didn’t really enough room to put anything else on it.

This contents was actually quite hard to do, as there was constant editing involved, and was quite fiddly to arrange. However, although I could have added images, overall I think that it is satisfactory.

DPS

This part of my work, to me is the most pleasing, as I knew exactly what I wanted to do, and how to make it look readable, and attractive, as well as keeping in the codes and conventions of a proper spread. I found a double page spread, by a band called “The Golden Silvers,” which looked really good, and to the genre of music that I wanted. It included a main image on one side of the double page spread , and then had a paragraph over the image, introducing the band. I thought that this idea was clever, so I decided to include this in my magazine. I made the font all the same, but I changed the size of each sentence, to make it more fun, and girly, as the magazine is more aimed at the teenage girl audience.

I chose and image of me and my sister representing the band “Regal Dollz,” and used it as half of the page. By making the image this big, it shows how bold and important the band really is. I didn’t want to slip into the idea of lots of texts, and not enough images of the band, because it wouldn’t have looked appealing.I kept to the theme of black and white, as it is bold, simple, but effective. I edited the picture by using a tool called “the sponge tool.” This is when you can make an image black and white, but you choose which sections you want. I wanted to show who was the lead singer in the band in some way, so I used this sponge tool all over the main image, apart from my red top that I was wearing. The black and white makes the red more bold, and is very eye catching, and original.

For the text, I was quite confused as to what to include, as I knew it had to be an interview with the band, but I didn’t; know what to ask. I wrote a back story of the band, explaining a little bit about the band members past, and how they came together, but I didn’t want any sort of big headed nonsense, I wanted the band to be modest, and clever. Personally I don’t like people who boast, because it doesn’t make me want to read on. I wanted to keep the target audience of 16-24’s interested, and by writing a good back story, I was able to ask the right questions and to complete a successful double page spread interview.

I used two images to use as little “insets” of the band, as one of the main conventions of a double page spread, is to include more images, as well as the interview itself. I chose two images, showing the band relaxing, and doing what they enjoy most; creating music.