Double Page Spread

Contents Page

Front Cover

Sketches

                                         CONTENTS PAGE

                                      DOUBLE PAGE SPREAD                                  

                                                FRONT PAGE                                      

Questionnaire

Magazine cover; first draft

This is the first draft of my music magazine cover. I decided to use this photograph as the front cover because it stood out and looked unusual, as it has a big dog that looks like a werewolf. The colour of the boy's hair has a good contrast with the dog's fur colour, which is black. I felt that this best represented the type of genre that I am doing, which is rock, but with different types e.g. heavy, 80's. I chose the title of the magazine cover to be in a bright pink colour because it stood out and is eye catching. One story that I have used is in a red font with a glowing yellow outline, I thought this looked a bit different so I decided to put it over the dogs fur, to make it stand out against the rest of the image. I used a text bar and filled it in with a dark purple with light purple text inside. I put different band names there that represented the type of genre it is.

On a whole, the first draft is alright, but there is room for plenty of improvement. I think there needs to be more of a stable colour scheme so that the text doesnt look out of place on the cover. I would want to put an outline around the title of the magazine, and maybe adjust the colour of it. There needs to be text filling out the page e.g. what's in the magazine, or if there are any free posters. I might think about shifting the bar to the top, play around with it and see how it fits in with the rest of the text that will be on the page. I could also turn the dog black and white in photoshop and see how that looks. It could then make the boy stand out more than the dog, emphasising that the boy is more important and has more power. It also feels like the picture is drawing all of the attention away from the articles that will be featured in the magazine. I would also change the size of the picture to fit an a4 sized page.

How these examples may affect my editorial decisions, and how I represent my own target audience.

After looking at 3 double page spreads, and closely analysing how each one has been laid out, it had changed my idea of how I would design a double page spread for the music magazine that I will be going to produce. I have learned that they have used the technique of big headlines, photographs that stand out well, and that also link with the initial story, also little chunks of information about the band have been used, and in some cases, tiny bits of information is put in a box about other bands, and what they're like. All of the techniques that have been used to create a double page spread draw people's attention to the interesting topic and photographs. Everything
links together in some way on the double page spreads, and the colour scheme is always constant, and never out of place on the spread. Analysing the 3 double page spreads has really changed my mind on how I would go about creating my double page spread, and also pointed me in the right direction with what conventions that I would personally use to draw my audience in to make the double page spread successful and interesting.

I think I would represent my target audience in a creative and interesting way, to keep the same conventions that other magazines have used, but change it around to make it something different, and something of my own. All the different types of genres that are supposed to be shown in the magazine will be represented in some form or another, either by use of colours, images and story headlines.