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