FINAL FRONT COVER, CONTENTS & DOUBLE PAGE SPREAD

This is my front cover I designed, I got my inspiration from music magazines such as Q and NME. I chose to photograph someone who would look like a conventional Indie-pop musician to make the theme of my magazine tie-in properly. I used sans-serif font for all of the text I wrote because I wanted the same text type throughout. But I alternated all of the text by using a variety of different font sizes, colours, outlines, gradients, to make the magazine conventional and attractive.

This is my final contents page, I wanted to use another photograph of the girl who was featured on the front cover so there was a recurring theme, and I added a quote she said to help promote the interview that was featured inside. I chose the colour yellow for the outline of the quote to match her glasses and I changed the font of her name 'Alice xo' to make it look like it had been hand-written.I wanted the word 'CONTENTS' to be big and bold so it was noticeable and be a big focus point. I number a few pages to show what would of been in the magazine and named a load of indie-pop bands and artists that were featured in the magazine, so if the artist on the front page wasn't what someone liked, a band featured within the magazine could interest them into buying the magazine.

This is my final double page spread, I worked around the magazine Q which inspiried me in some aspects of my double page spread. I used the line tool on InDesign to give the double page spread a layout, by using the lines it gives the page a definitive layout, and enables the viewers eyes tofollow the lines across the page. All the photographs were taken by me and I made all of the album covers in photoshop using a text tool and a crop tool. I made up websites to make it look more real and like other conventional magazines, I also added a date and page numbers to give a better effect of it seeming real. 

old DPS

Here is my original double page spread I created for my music magazine, I didn't like this layout because it didn't seem conventional when I compared it to magazine double page spreads in magazines such as, Q or NME or the Rolling Stones. I researched into Q magazine double page spreads, and took ideas from their album pages and tried again and made another double page spread, which I think looks more conventional, compared to this try.

changes and improvements

After some deliberation I decided to completely change my double page spread and created a new one. I decided to change it because I didn't think it looked very conventional in comparison to music magazines. I looked through Q magazine as they have a lot of album features and got inspiration from That magazine and made a new double page spread.

Here is my new double page spread I created, I used the software InDesign to create a column layout which is very conventional in magazines. I had one of my albums as a main feature on one of the pages and had 3 other albums which I wrote about but in less detail on the other page. I also remembered to add a date, my magazine logo and page numbers, and I added lines to give the page more of a layout and a frame for readers to follow.

I also made a few changes to my front cover to give it a more conventional look. I added a date and changed my 'left third' by re-arranging the words and making the 'ALL NEW' bold and in a bigger font than the words bands and solo artists and made them words  a dark red so they would stand out against the white letters. And I changed the 2012 to the same colour as the 'Free Gig Tickets' so the colour scheme tied in better.

ALBUM COVERS & ORIGINAL PHOTOGRAPHS

For my double page spread I decided to do an album chart page. I made all of the album covers myself and used all my own photographs for them. I created all of the albums on photoshop and created made-up artists and album names for the double page spread. I uploaded the original photographs I used for the albums and the pictures I used for the albums complete with the name and album title. I am really happy with the album covers I made and I am glad I decided to do my double page spread about an album chart instead of an interview because, it gave me more of a variety of things to write about and let me make-up an opinion of artists and bands and I think the double page 
spread turned out well. I used a variety of photos, for solo artists I used pictures with only one person in and for bands I used more landscape photographs and photos without people because I didn't have any photos that would look like a conventional band, and most of the time bands don't usually use photographs of themselves on their albums. 

Here are the final album covers I made on photoshop and used on my double page spread complete with artist names and album titles.

ORIGINAL PHOTOS

Here are my photographs I used for my front cover and my contents page. This is the original photo I took, I edited the photo on photoshop by boosting the contrast and brightness which made the photo more interesting and eye catching. I chose this photo for my main image for my front cover because it was a head on shot which catches readers attention because people are attracted to other peoples eyes. I took this photo at a high angle, looking down at her, this created an 'innocent' look  and although she isn't posing I think the photograph is very strong and powerful.

Here is the original photograph I captured and used for my contents page. I really liked this photo because she has a really nice, strong pose and the photo really catches your attention even though you can't see her eyes. The colour of the sunglasses brighten up the photo but I like that the photo is against a black background which is what I initially wanted. Having the yellow glasses and her red lips went well with the colour scheme I used on the contents page, and I was really happy with the result.