Contents Page design - no context just yet

 Here I have used the same font as my cover page, for the contents font I used my anchorage text's font and for my masthead and date it was the body text.

 Here I have added borders around my page, this was to make it easier to align context and also to make the page look "organised" as a posh taget audience magazine.

 Here I have added images, one taken from a piano studio room, the reason I chose to take it like this was because, the piano and the chandelier is visible, this is to emphasize the fact that these things are expensive. Of course the gibson guitar was also used as the second image but rather than brand I wanted to focus on the bokeh effect because rather than having a clear image, this looks more fashionable at the same time draws audience's attention more than a full focused image.

Audience Feed backs and changes to be made

How does my contents page look at this stage?

Well in my opinion it doesn’t really look effective to me because of the contrasty colours that are being used. As you can see the first image of the model, stands out significantly from the other two images, especially with the fact that it is the same model as the cover page, the audience may think that: well, this magazine might only just contain context about one person while the rest of the context is uninteresting tabloids. The second thing I would like to point out is that the guitar image is too badly stretched from the original size, which makes it look horrible, you need to keep the aspect ratio of the image. And you should really get rid of the piano image, even though given the fact that: yes it is an expensive product, but the image contrasts too differently from the other two which gives off an awkward feel to it instead of a relaxed page to look at.

Changes made:

I have made all the images black and white, because this will solve the problem of contrasty colours as well as will associate the images together better, given the fact that my magazine is a vintage old style posh magazine, rather than a modern colour image, it might be better to use old fashioned style images.

Final Overview of my Front Cover and Review

According to my audience feedbacks, yes I have changed most of the key things:

·      Skyline repetition of Jimmy Page

• ·      “Free 10 CDs”, Too much free CDs and irritable font effects
• ·      The whole left column doesn’t look good, especially grammar
• ·      Masthead and main image overlaps each other too much
• ·      Non consistency of fonts

Yes I have made the changes to my skyline so I have made it smaller and changed make changes to the fonts to make it the same as most of my cover lines below. The reason I chose to do this is because the reader would feel more relaxed if exposed with similar fonts and it would keep my specific house style to eventually create brand recognition.

I have manipulated and have just completely deleted the Free CDs section, firstly because I have realized that my target audience is of a high class social status which means my magazines should not deal with free elements as easy as other magazines. And as well as the left column I have completely changed the whole section, What I have done is combining the left and right excessive space to make my anchorage text stand out even more by making it centre aligned and as large as possible. This will definitely attract the audience into wanting to know what will the context about her be. The same goes for my masthead, which is now larger than before and is completely in the view of the readers. The reason I chose to do this was purely because I wanted to make both my image and mast head stand out, so instead I have made my skyline smaller and just move my images upwards.

Long lastly my magazine now is in the use of similar fonts, this means I am keeping the house style of my magazine to these specific fonts.

Changes made for my front cover

Here in order to meet my feedback responses, yes I have made changes to my Skyline and have changes one of my guitarists to Jimi Hendrix instead to avoid the repetition of Jimmy. The masthead is nice and clear compared to before and the issue date seems more realistic.

 My lines are now nicely in similar fonts, so house style comes in. I intend to keep this font though-out all my following works.

Work Done, my final cover draft #1

Cover page reflection

After having finished my first cover draft, I have been to some of my friends, parents and cousins to ask them for some feedback for my cover page and these are some of my questions:

As my aunt works in the magazine industry, I asked her to give me some professional feedback on how my magazine looks right now.

How do you think my cover page looks?                I think it looks unprofessional, lacks beauty.

Then how could I improve it?     Okay, starting off with your skyline, it looks too abstract compared to your context, you should get rid of the filtering effects and make it look normal, strait text, a font like your lines would be perfect. The second thing you should change is the Free! 10 CDs; that is just horribly made especially the number 10 where you added the effects, maybe you should just delete it and also another thing, your selling your magazines for profit, I find giving out 10 CDs will make your company bankrupt , and even most of my magazines don’t provide free things with it. The next thing is your context, I like your grey lines but you have to make sure that they don’t contain any repetition because your audience would just look at it as if your magazine has no other interesting topics; it’s all about variety son.

Then does my image look good?                               Well as far as I am concerned I like your image and the way you took it because it goes really well with context, you purposely left the right side a blank space for the image, this means you have thought clearly about the fact that text will be on there. But you could make the your title look larger or just make it in front because your magazine is still not a popular, there’s no brand image yet so just make it clear for now, or move it up and make your skyline smaller. As for the left column, get rid of it, it look totally horrible because your use of fonts is too inconsistent, even professional magazines only have a few fonts, let’s use vogue as an example, vogue uses Didot mostly for main text in the magazine, you should make use of similar or just stick to a few.

Then can you just list the things I need to improve on?

Well firstly your skyline, both the colour and size, next is your Free CDs context and your repetition of Jimmy page should be out there, change your whole left column. 

Final cover page production

 Here I added my skyline to my masthead of some very popular guitarists in their time, because this issue will mainly focus on guitarists.

Here I added a date of the issue, as i could randomly make up anything instead I made it the birthdate of Jimmy Page, excluding the year.

 Here  added some cover lines to the piece, and also as you can see I changed my mind about the mast head and decided to make it a little brighter and made it 3D for some extra texture.

 Here is more lines, but as you can see it is not part of my skyline, but that is what I intentionally did to make the audience think, that my magazine is more than those 3 on the skyline.

Now here are sell lines more advertising based and physiological based. Here I used the word "FREE" to draw people's attention because people like free stuff, and also by using words such as GREATEST and of all time.

Now here comes my anchorage text used to introduce my model, And here's what she is.

Mast Head Editing and its steps to completion

 As you can see my mast head has many steps involved in it, some really important parts would be the 2nd part where i added to inner glow to the mast head, and the 3th 4th and 5th would be adding the satin colours and gradient overlay to the mast head.

All about main image retouching

 By using Adobe Light Room, i have retouched the shadows and highlights of my image, this includes the contrasts and coloring in the hair details.

 This involves using PhotoShop, and i have used to magic wand tool to cut out the background.

 The involves, adding an extra layer to the background.

 This is using the extra background to create an ambience effect in the background to make the image seems kind of "in the spotlight"

And this is the facial retouching i have done.

And this is the finished image and background I am going to use for my cover page. This will be the ONLY page that is in color, because I find that the cover has to stand out most even if my theme is in the vintage genre.

Even more photos

 I decided to take more photos, however this time i had an image of how my mast head will fit through the image so I think that these images will be more suitable than the previously taken pictures.
The first image will have all the context on the right and the name of the models on the left side bold and big.
The second image will have a two sided image contextual wise.
The third image will pretty much be the same.

Mast Head final decisions

Comparing all of my fonts, I have found out that only these five will look the best as my mast head, with my theme in my mind, my final decision will also come from which image I am going to use.

MastHead Fonts

MastHead Ideas

In the Vintage section "first4" relates with the work Vintage, so this matches my magazine theme. Rolls which is a short form of "Rock and roll" and lastly a partial "Vin" + "Acoustics". The word acoustics relates to unplugged music which again matches my magazine context. Here I also made use of words on the lines of Records, so something like a collectors magazine. Vinyl records are known to be really classy CDs in the old ages, and is something i would like to make use for my masthead. The final 2 is just a variation of French and Italian ways to spell "Music", I believe that La Musique and Musica looks and spells out "posh"ness feelings to these titles.

Photo's Showdown

 The reason I took this photo and thought it was suitable was because taking this mid shot on a white background would be really easy to edit, including retouching and background changing. As for the angle and the lighting I chose was really simple in this case, a straight angled mid shot, I believe that my model had her arms up to her head was because I wanted to add something like a puff on the right side of her arm later and made it look as if the puff is hanging on her arm.

 In this photo I had a Marshall amp in this photo, this was to made the amp and the model angle stand out. And I really think that the amp goes with my theme really well. My model in this case has the lights on her hair but shadows on her face, I was trying to create an effect to make my model seems kind of hidden and this picture shows it really well.

 Now the following pictures are took with a background, It seemed realistic because I had a grand piano on its background, and found that it really went well with the one piece dress she has on.

 This picture taken on a landscape angle really suits the gold edge of the piano. This pictures gives of a kind of posh feel to it, including the back lights that was used.







               

And this last picture taken with her back facing the camera was to express the background details, but i felt that this picture seemed least appropriate because there is too much on the background and wont really go well with a magazine cover.

Pitch

My magazine masthead might be "On the rocks" or "Vintage Acoustics or Vint Acoutics". My magazine will be based on mostly golden oldies music, and example of a context would be "Eric Clapton's first guitar performance and his reactions" or in the lines of "How Led Zeppelin wrote Stairway to heavens". 

Based on my context I don't really feel that my target audience will be teens but will be mostly 

Bs-Cs audience that are of a maturer age from the demographic model. So statistically speaking around 70% or more will be ages around mid 20s to older ages and are people who love music.

My magazine will include special interviews me and my team made during the old ages and will include information that has never been released on mass media before.

My magazine house style will mostly be on a vintage feel with no colour on the pictures, As like old magazine were, my magazine will mostly not contain colour except for mast heads and really important information.

My target audience will respond really quickly to my magazines because the layouts and design will look really good with not much writing on every pages, most writings will be for VERY important interviews that my audience won't be able to ignore, An example would be o the lines of "Special interview on the anonymous buyer of the legendary, Reach out to Asia Stratoscaster" or "The interview with Jimmy Page Les Paul".

2# DPS Planning

Again a simple design however the main image now, is on a portrait design. The reason I chose to do this was because this new layout will not be formatted as a news paper article design but in case will be in a magazine article layout.

1# DPS Planning

This double page spread plan seems very simple and is very simple because that is what i wanted my final production to look like. I wanted an "apple" look to my magazine, a simple and best in layouts and design. I believe that I will write a news article about my my interview I did with my model on her newest show.

Contents page planning

This contents page I made, I felt that this was made really professionally, because it gave off really good reviews from my fellow friends and I thought the layout of this was really attractive and suitable to my magazine theme. As this gives off the same kind of oldies feel.