Evaluation

Evaluation

I have purposely made my music magazine to both follow the same palette of colour and try to follow the same genre conventions as MOJO and constantly change the way the audience thinks due to subtle design techniques and looking at the connotations of colours. I think it was vital that I constantly referenced the MOJO magazine for design conventions. I followed this and added some of my own inspiration such as the snow due to the white colour having connotations of innocence; originality (the new age of rock and roll) and finally the feel of being in winter as this was the December issue. I liked the idea of my model (see left) to be stood in portrait position with a direct mode of address as it created a direct line between the reader and the picture thus making an eye catching effect, I also wanted my Model to wear a floral shirt as it was indexical hint towards him being famous and more of a classic rock as it is unusual and very retro to suit the target audience.  I took the same masthead from the front cover to create an ongoing theme.  After double checking the contents I realized I should reduce the size of the masthead and create a smaller one to make it look less distracting so that I could lead the reader’s eye more effectively. I finally took the decision to remove the orange text and swap it for a more bold and simplistic scheme. I adjusted this to keep the reader’s attention and to stick with the same theme as MOJO. Finally after debating what was missing, I researched a couple of magazine and noticed they all had a small quotation from one of the articles at the bottom of the contents so I tried this idea and it just seemed to fit perfectly and make a good match to other magazines of the same genre.

Finally after sorting out the contents and the front cover I moved on to the double paged spread. I think due to the technological advances and the advances in camera’s this was made much easier as not only did the picture have much better quality than it would of done 20 years ago, it was also quite an easy task to edit it as with the invention of Photoshop (photo editing software) although the technical side of this was quite easy, this in my opinion was one of the hardest articles to recreate in a professional way, as it had so many different house styles and themes due to the theme recreating what was mentioned in the article and reflected both in themes. For this I decided to take the picture first of all and base the theme around the picture. In this case Patrick Quinn and Jack Bowler did a shooting pose in a direct mode of adress so I decided to create an article about a ‘Rock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels’. I thought this was both a clever pun and quite a cool sounding festival name. Because of this I realized I needed quite a gritty backdrop for the article so decided take a picture of a wall and then de-saturated it to create a brick wall that looked extremely effective except I had trouble reading the words. I finally decided to adjust the contrast so that the extremely black areas became white and grey. I re-inserted this picture into In-Design and it worked perfectly with the ‘Rock, Stock’ title and black and white picture with the colour highlights of the models. I personally found that this effect (although looking better than the others) still didn’t suit the magazine style. After a few modifications I could rectify this error and had to leave it. Unfortunately I didn’t ever find something that would look more relevant or effective in this space and decided to give up on looking.

I used the front covers from my mood board to see essentially what attracts readers to the magazine. After a bit of research it turns out that there isn’t something specific that creates a retro genre and (some) of the new music. Just specifically the majority of the band members tend to be ‘eccentric’ such as Seasick Steve, Ringo Starr and Keith Moon. They all had something specific about their nature. I wanted to emphasis this in my front cover and decided to suit one person up, give a hooded jumper to the next and gave a black jacket to the next. This was done to mimic the classic “abbey road” symbolic meanings and clothes, I challeneged and developed from the Abbey Road album cover from the Beatles. I wanted to add my monochrome to challenge this idea, and add metaphorical value by saying that with the monochrome effect everybody is equal. I loved the way it looked in the white snow and decided to use the rule of thirds in the photo to make it both lead your eye and follow the pattern of MOJO central images. I also decided to do the majority of the photos in black and white to appeal to the social group (mainly 30-50 year olds). I also liked the way it made the photo’s seem both poignant and allowed the reader to feel as though they were back in the time period.

I took a step back from the photo’s to examine what they looked like in comparison to the MOJO magazine. I was quite pleased with the results as they both looked as though they could be from the same magazine. As people that read MOJO was my target audience I was extremely pleased and dedicated myself into making them look as though they were inspired from the same sort of genre. I [personally put myself in the same market despite being a lot younger than the target audience as I love ‘old’ music. I loved the idea’s related to these and like the idea of still nowadays scouting for a few bands that can bring back feelings of the past so I thought I was perfectly suited to making this magazine instead of any others. Finally I tried to edit the magazine to keep a constant theme of rock and roll retro to follow the conventions of MOJO and stick to the same mature feeling magazine.

At first I explored some of the magazine distributers such as ‘Music Magazines Inc’ and ‘Bauer’ but I noticed that Bauer already had a retro music magazine and ‘MM’ also had a Beatles magazine but not much apart from that, that focused on retro elements of the music industry. At first I initially thought I would try to get it published by Bauer as it is a multi-million making company. But after a bit of research, they have a huge amount of feedback for MOJO and a huge customer response. So I decided to change this and would aim more towards ‘MM’ as they had a much smaller subscription based customer spectrum. This would be better as I would be allowed to tailor the content directly for the consumer. It would also be great as you would be allowed to add various free CD’s as you know you’re going to have a constant 12 month period of payments ensuring the consumer only bought your magazine. On the other hand Bauer still would have been a good choice as it might be a less constant income of payments but released on a much wider scale.

I made my magazine represent more mature music social group, this means that there isn’t a specific audience I was targeting . I did this purely as I had quite a lot of knowledge in this area. Quite luckily it turned out that there was a similar magazine that concentrated mainly on the older artist and discovering new talent that replicates the dated sound from the 60’s. I found this a good choice to produce a similar magazine around and as it was such a specific audience it was quite easy to tailor it around. I only had to change some of the language used in interviews and reviews and change the majority of the photo’s to a monochrome photo (as said previously). I aimed it for that age group specifically as there would be a lot more expendable cash then a younger audience and on top of this they would suit the time period for retro music perfect as it would be the ideal time for them to have listened to some of the more classic band.

I attracted my specific audience by using monochrome pictures to evoke a sense of nostalgia so that the consumer could relate to the old fashioned bands and discover new talent that will let them reminisce towards the older days of music. I tried to remain with the front covers central image being in a strong compositional ‘V’. This replicated the same three man bands that the old generations were used to. I think it did a good job of attracting attention from my specific target audience as the black, white and red colour scheme only really applied to my specific audience and the way that they feel. Unfortunately I couldn’t replicate some of the classic effects.  I tried using a classic film strip effect on the contents page to add something original to look at in the contents page that also has

I have learnt from using Photoshop a few new techniques. I have also been able to use InDesign to arrange the magazine into a professional layout. If I am, honest when I first started this task I told myself I wasn’t going to use InDesign and stick to what I know. I ;earnt how to use the de-saturation tool to create a faded white image and also learnt that yould edit the dark blacks in an image using Reflecting upon this decision this was a poor choice and didn’t allow me to arrange as well as I could have done. Eventually I started to use it finally on my article and it made designing magazines twice as easy. At first it took some adapting to as I couldn’t use some of the cursor tools or magic wand tools which I was used to, but soon picked up the methods of getting around this. I used the adobe package to assemble the magazine and create a lot of ease when I used them in conjunction. I was extremely pleased with some of the knowledge I gained from using these applications and picked up a few new techniques for my previous Photoshop work at home. I also learnt how to use the Pen tool on InDesign to sketch around the boarder of a picture and get the exact copy highlight of it. This allowed me to manipulate an exact replica of the picture so you can create overlapping text or move a picture in front of a letter.

I think my idea’s from my preliminary task was a bit too ambitious for my own good as some of the editing techniques required were extremely complicated and although I replicated some of them, some of them would require a very long tutorial and a lot of spare time, not to mention the restriction of not being able to use found images. I also didn’t have as much knowledge as I do now about various magazine industry standard terminologies and techniques they use.  Because of this I had to edit some of the featured articles and lead articles in and essentially completely transform my original ideas and add specific magazine related features. More importantly what I found that completely contrasted between my preliminary task and my final was the lack of theme and target audience.

Design Process

First of all I aimed my music magazine at a more mature audience, someone that would enjoy a more retro, old fashioned music genre. This left me with quite a difficult audience to target as it has no specific targeted age but just a general appeal to an overall audience. This made my theme non-sepcific to age and instead made it specific to the style of music. This said I tailored my music magazine to suit the genre by adding clean-cutbold mastheads with a little classic signature strapline beneath it. I also followed the style by making my pictures desaturated to create the nostalgic feel. I used a palette of red, black and white because of my mood board. I looked at the existing text MOJO and noticed that it follows this style by always having a banner at the very top of the magazine offering a free CD.

 This was my first mood board that just summed up the music genre I was aiming it for and all the cliches that follow. I kept it so it allowed me to aim it properly and constantly get themes that run across almost all of the shots.
It was just designed to give me a taste of the themes involved and help me to recreate the same sort of themes as what I tried to do on the final magazine. I think the most poignant of the pictures has to be the snapped acoustic guitar head, this connotes:  Destruction, rebellion and the old fashioned rock. The same theme of a classic genre of music which has slowly been discarded and broken throughout the years to make way for the new and shiny electric guitars and I specifically tried to rebel against this trend in my magazine and tried to keep some of the classic music involved in every single page. I also quite liked the use of black and white and the contrast with a red highlight section over guitar which I finally used at the end of the magazine

This was different to the mood board above as it was aimed at the covers of the magazine I was trying to recreate with the same sort of genre of magazine. I noticed from the word go that the majority of the covers were either in black and white desaturated colours to create an eye catching effect. I also noticed the majority of the covers were in medium close up with a direct mode of adress making the cover alot more eye catching. I also noticed that the masthead was either in black or white with a slight drops shadow and thus recreated the same effect with my final version. most of the magazines I analysed from that point onwards had a three tone colour palette of black, white and a third bold colour such as orange red or yellow. In the end I decided to stay with this same theme and created a white, black and red scheme. I also matched the style of my writing with MOJO and create a much more classic writing style with very analytic expressions and descriptive adjectives and metaphors.

Existing Media Texts

This was my first attempt at analysing a front cover and I dont think I did too bad of a job with it. I initially just highlighted basic connotations and didnt explore into them futher than just face value. I realised at about this point that this was'nt the target audience I would be aiming my magazine at and would have to have a more related audience. I also used some of the most basic annotations just to specify the colour and object. I just quoted the text and added some more advanced terminoligy at a later date. I also briefly talked about the "Direct mode of adress" but I didnt realise the sheer amount of impact this had at the time but eventually ended up using the power of eye contact on my contents page which made a huge impact to the reader

This was the second to last music magazine I analysed and after the experience of the first one I had a bit more content to analyse and alot more analytical language to do so. I found this was simialar to the to the first as they both have quite busy covers but this was approaching more towards my audience style that looked as though it was a more mature appreciation of music.With the text it adds a slight drop shadow to every piece of text and caption which I thought was a nice effect and eventually utilized this in my final magazine to create different effects on individual captions and create a professional effect which I think I eventually managed after multiple trials and errors.

This magazine was a lot harder to analyse as until a later date I didnt realise that it was actually an advert rather than an actual magazine cover. Although now looking back it had some amazing graphical effects such as splitting the page into thirds with the christmas lights and the sideways portrait of Leonard Cohen. It creates a huge effect and keads the eye in a landscape view despite the portrait layout. I didnt realise it yet but this was the exact audience I was aiming for as it had a much more retro appreciation of music that follwed the same maturity of music that I was aiming at emulating their design choices so I could suit the audience. This was my first step on a long road of editing to follow the strict design and colour palette that MOJO followed.

With every different music magazine and music style there is always alternativedesign styles, this is more increasingly so with modern magazine. Retro, taking up sepia images and a 3 tone colour palette, Rock: Generally a stamped text style and distorted images with a typically dark colour palettes. R&B and rap generally have a more fancy reflective text type to suit the genre it is tied in with. Each and every magazine has something different and I think that mimicking these styles was key to making my magazine look professional. I wanted a basic style that was mainly Bold or Arial, just to create a stand out effect of prestige and a more mature generation. On the front cover with almost ever magazine had a max of about 3 people and almost always in direct mode of adress,this was more to do with the target audience rather than just coincidence due to the retro audience being more into smaller bands/ artists rather than massive orchestras of people,  It always had the Masthead about 1/4 of the way down the magazine and about 90% of the time had the central image overlapping the lettering in some form or other. I decided that the other 10% of the time is when there is more than 1 band member on the front cover and due to the triangular compositional shot type of my final mag's cover I decided to not overlap the band members as it didnt look professional.

Contents pages were quite intresting as these were alot more varied in styles as with mojo they tended to have switched them completely in the last few years, this again followed my pattern of audience as it had to be quite stylish, clean cut and bold but without making the maturity feel lost in the process. They used to have a collage of most of the articles in the magazine and kept the lead article much bigger than the rest but recently they have switched this to a more abstract picture on the inside with either a very bold colour palette or a unusual shot of a band member with a bit of photography originality.

Production Process

My production process was to initially be completely reliant on photoshop as I was already fairly skilled with this application and had a basic knowledge of how to do things on it. After a while and starting on my magazine cover I realised that this wasnt the solution to all my problems as I was finding it extremely hard to process multiple things and edit insignifficant borders and boxes without it glitching or being more than trouble. Eventually I began to test InDesign as it had a more specific toolset and allowed you to organise pages and create various layers that you could quickly jump to and edit. Unlike photoshop it had a seperate layout in which it would automatically select a layer without you having to manually switch layers by clicking on the tab on the left hand of the screen and reselecting. After the first few errors and accidentally putting my entire magazine into the same layer I achieved a better looking magazine result than the previous attempt on photoshop with a lot less effort.

 This was the initial photo that we took outside in the snow. I initially had the design idea that I could put a band on the front cover but after taking a couple of photos and analysing a few magazines I noticed that the majority of MOJO magazines were shot in portrait with a max of about 3 people and so I set on with making this fit the genre more. I pruposely shot it in the snow because it create a fantastic landscape in the background and create a particle effect of the people in shot. I shot it from a medium long shot so that I got a sense of perspective and length of the band that matched the front of the magazine in an A4 layout. This also fitted in with the target audience once more as it showed this idea of the music being very purist as the snow connotes a classic feeling

In the second picture (right) I edited the other two people out of the shot but encountered the problem with two people crossing onto the picture and clashing with the picture. I had to sort this out with the clone tool and gradually edited out the hands and legs of the people pretuding into the picture. After this I stuck with my initial idea of taking the picture in portrait and edited in a sepia tone to create an old effect with a pseudo steampunk style with the clarinet in the background. I also intially highlighted all of the instruments with a red tone to stand out but after seeing a cheap 2D effect happen to the microphone I decided to stick with just the guitar for the professional look. Finally I edited out the odd branch that entered the shot and removed the lampost from the top left of the screen to stop it from removng the readers attention from the main centre image. In all the time of editing my photos I have used a variety of techniques. I used such things as the Clone Tool so that I could cover up blotches and blemishes on the picture such as the leg thats inserted inside of the image which I edited out. I also used filters aswell to create a sepia effect and in some of my earlier work I used the filter to create a cutout effect so that it seemed a much more lighthearted magazine. Filters can be used from cartoon looking to creating a water toned effect on top of the image so that it looks like its been washed away. It creates a really original perspective. Finally I used the cut-out tool to remove the background from my images and put a custom version such as a gradient or a drop shadow to the images.

This was my final front cover designs with drop shadows behind all the text and a stand out tone of the featured article. I took idea's from the previous MOJO magazine I had analysed and mimicked the styles of. I changed alot from the step before as I thought I had finished but didnt like the look of the magazine at all. I disliked the way it had an extremely unprofessional vibe about it so set out to find the little extra bits that can turn a magazine from looking student-like to a professional design. I think the most noticable addition is the new red colour palette instead of the orange. I realised this was the best idea as it created a bolder contrast like MOJO's designs are usually like. I had to use a variety of effects on the majority of the words and titles to make them stand out and kept with the scanned in CD at the top left of the magazine.

This was my first design of the contents, Despite looking reasonable it didnt seem very professional. At first I didnt understand why this was but eventually after seeing various MOJO contents I realised the big problem was the sheer size of the text on it. It seemed alot more like a front cover than it did a contents paged and also missed out the quotation thats on almost every MOJO contents, So I quoted from one of my pages in a later on attempt. I like the high angle shot of Jordan but I disliked the left hand side being massively oversized and (Jordan Webb) on the left side of the contents was missing a part of his left arm. I liked the drop shadow that was behind him as it created a stand out effect that was extremely eye catching but at the same time you are only sub-conciously aware it is there. In the later version I decided to remove the colour from Jordan's portrait. I thought this reflected the old fashioned style of MOJO, combined with the wiser and more abstract and artsy style

This the final contents that I have created and despite not looking too different from my previous I spent quite a bit of time editing this and making it look a professional quality. First of all I checked the mood board for a bit of inspiration, I also added subtleties such as the quote at the bottom left. This was to suit the target audience, this was purposeful as the quotation allows the reader to be intrested in the more personal sections of bands and more importantly gain the perspective of some of the band members.

This was my final two page spread article, this was shot next to a tree at a slant so that I could make the image into thirds and lead the eye to the left hand side. I also liked the brick wall effect that had been desaturated on the left hand side to make a more intresting texture for the text to lie on. I also designed the shot to be in a monochrome colour of the background with the two models in the foreground in colour so that it would almost look as if they were popping out.

Preliminary Task

This was my very first concept of the school magazine that would eventually end up as my music magazine. I wanted the textured lettering in my initial idea but after finally designed it realized it didn’t suit my target audience at all and I changed it for the more adult themed smooth text. I also came up with the strapline "breaking the learning curve since..." because it sounded like a quite a good slogan. Afterwards I contemplated keeping it in my finished music magazine or a snappier one that more relative to the genre. After initially leaving it out of the second concept front cover I put a title related motto "No school like the old school". I also consisted throughout with the puffs idea at the bottom of the page but eventually gradually got rid of the flash that came with it. I also eventually got rid of the captions for the left hand side sub-image but added this to the second prototype.The biggest problem that remained with this first prototype was that it felt empty and so instead of adding a background on the next magazine I created a landscape that made it alot less bland and empty but still made it look slightly dull but in the very end I decided to take the picture in the snow so that it was both alot more pretty but aswell with it alot more unique and artsy.

At the top there is a masthead with a green texture that has connotations of nature and relates back to the idea of youth considering it is a school magazine. It also has a drop shadow to create a sense of depth and make it look more professional. At the top left of the masthead there is a ear which has a picture of the school on it and is drawn in black and white to show the participation of students to making magazine and adds a distinctive sepia eye catcher. Beneath this there is the strapline "breaking the learning curve since 1982". Taking up most of the space is the central image with a direct mode of adress. It is a young person playing the drums which subtley hints towards the genre on the inside of the magazine being more rock than rap or hiphop and slightly to the left there is a lead article in a small box with an aqua colour which has connotations of being refreshed and water. The article reads "revision help" and expands upon this within the caption at the bottom. In the bottom left there is a bright yellow flash to symbolise light and good at the same time as being a colour that grabs the readers attention. Slightly to the right at the bottom there are two puffs that express opinions from the inside of the magazine. At the centre right there is an extract from one of the articles that is a rhetorical question that may both anger and intrest the reader which then creates curiosity in order for the reader to be intrested and buy it. Finally at the top right there is the classic Ahsfield logo in replace for the D of the word which creates both a logo and a feeling of prestice and academic wealth.

This is my second to last concept of my contents page. I tried to keep it as simple as possible but remain with the sketchiness. I think the text on this page was way too big for its purpose and looked too spread out and without any information. Compositionally it looked quite good in a column I quite liked the two tones green between the leaves and the slight green background; I left it this colour to remain in line with the magazines colour palette. I added basic images to start off with just to give me an example in the small boxes in the top third of the page. I eventually revoked the idea of having pictures in boxes and gradually came to terms with the idea of a huge picture to seperate the two collums and create a vertical segregation of thirds on the right hand of the page would both segregate the page better and attract more attention. I also stayed with the same sort of layout for the pages on the contents so that it stayed in line and remained neat. The same hashed line was used in my final version to create separation between the title and create a semi underline beneath it. Although it looked original I didn’t like the way that every piece of text was either shadowed or beveled. I added the date at the top of the page just to also create a monthly or weekly episode

This was my initial idea of both where to shoot the magazine at and the general sketchy look of it, I initially wanted a tear off paper section at the bottom third of the magazine to follow the strong compositional pattern by splitting the page into thirds with puffs in them, after a while I realized this may not be the best idea because it took a long time to both find the perfect ripped piece and scan it in and edit it. I put myself in a direct mode of address with a medium close-up , direct perspective to give the idea of addressing the reader. In contrast to the previous idea I got rid of the drum set because it both obstructed the view of the artist and would need a medium close up or closer to look reasonable and it was also extremely hard to obtain a room in music as it was constantly occupied and stuck with a more light hearted kooky approach. I put myself in front of the Ashfield text as it made it stand out more and created a layered effect; much like the magazine I based it on (MOJO magazine). I also used a picture of Jake and added a taped effect so that it looked as though it was made in a collage. I think the main difference between this and my final magazine was the fact that there was much more text on my front cover and I also shot my picture from a much wider perspective so I could get 3 band members in

The Industry

This was my first work on how magazines have evolved over the years and it wasnt until now that I realised how long magazines have been about for. According to historical documentation the very first magazine was 1586. I have condensed this down to vital information and the general high-times of magazine sales despite initially starting in obscure places. After this research I had an extremely good insight towards all of the magazines from the past and the present and can only guess what the future holds for magazines. At this point I was just creating the very basic concepts for my magazine in my head and eventually hollowed out most of the content from my initial ideas to create a modern day industry standard magazine as some of the old terms and styles are a complete contrast to modern day magazines

After looking in a couple of magazines I noticed a trend that the biggest and most popular music magazine is published by Bauer. This was also the same for the movie industry and in many other magazines such as MOJO it was also advertised in there for their own magazines. This publisher produces magazines in pretty much every genre for various subjects and sports. There website can be found here (http://www.greatmagazines.co.uk/)
It is a combination of both subscription based magazines and a complete website dedicated to their magazines and responses. There are multiple publishers for music magazines but Bauer being the main industry leader publishes the majority of the magazines thus making the most profitable.

This is the H Bauer logo, this is not to be confused with the bauer hockey make. Ironically the surname Bauer translates into english being a peasant or a farmer despite a multi-million making company They publish a range of magazines including MOJO, Empire, Take a Break and TV Choice. The German name being Bauer Verlagsgruppe, the headquarters is based in Hamburg and thus being called H Bauer. MOJO isnt the only music magazine that Bauer publish, they also publish: Kerrang and Q and much more not so famous music magazine. Not only do they deal in magazines but they also have a 50% share of the British company 'Box Television'. Despite their headquarters being in Hamburg they also have offices all around the world in:
USA ,Spain, France, Austria, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Hungary, Czech Republic, Mexico, China, Russia, Slovakia, United Kingdom, Nigeria.

This is my analysis of the magazine techniques such as: Masthead, Strapline and Featured articles. I created this just to help me out and show my knowledge of the music magazine technical language and at a futher date reminds me if my memory needs jogging. I also thought it would be useful to keep as a quick reference at a later time

Jonathan Alford's PDS1/MS Foundation Portfolio