Fonts

For my magazine front cover, I will be using a font called Gargoyles from http://www.dafont.com/ for the brand logo text (CMS).

I have chosen this partly because I personally like the looks of it, it is bold, yet simple and makes an impression which is what I wanted in order to make my magazine's logo memorable. I also chose it because it looks a bit like the font used in the title of the Grand Theft Auto games, which aside from being a very good looking logo, is also one of the things I found out that my target audience is likely to buy and be familiar with as it is one of the items shown on the NME reader profile media pack. So using a familiar text might encourage people to purchase the magazine. Before selecting this font I also asked a few friends who fit the profile of my target audience about which font they would prefer, Gargoyle or several others I had picked out as possibilities, and they all agreed that it was the best choice.

The font I had originally chosen for my main sell text and subheadings on the front cover is Black Chancery.

from http://www.dafont.com/. I chose to use this font because, as with the other I asked some people to pick the font they liked best from Black Chancey, Fashion Victim, Rezland, Xenogears, Deckers and Velocity (all fonts from http://www.dafont.com/) They decided that Black Chancey looked the best. However I then decided it looked too serrif and gothic and I wanted to keep the main sells quite simple to express a serious tone for the magazine, as I thought that would be more appealing to my target audience who I believe would be more interested in a serious music magazine than, for lack of a better word, a poncy showoff of one. For this reason I chose the more basic and serious looking font of Excelsior Sans.

Which is quite a serious font but also has an element of disorder which gives the implication that the magazine is serious about music, but also fun and entertaining. Equally it's a nice looking font without being too drastic so as to divert attention away from the main flash, I also thought it themed well with Gargoyles, the font I'm going to use for my masthead. Lastly I asked the same group of friends if they preferred it to Black Chancery, and the majority of them said that they did so I assume I am on the right track to pleasing my target audience.

Any regular text will just be written in Aerial, as it is a nice simple, easy to read font that gives a professional feel to it as it is used in newspapers. Byregular text I mean the text under the main sell subheadings, the contents page and the article on my double page spread.

Flat Plans

Above is the flat plan for one of the front covers I designed. I attempted to make it conform to a standard rock magazine look and style in order to appeal to my target audience. The masthead is similar in design to that of the Kerrang! magazine cover I analyzed, I chose this because it gives a bold and strong impression that you would not be able to achieve by using a smaller masthead or one at a different angle. The name of my magazine will be CMS, which stands for Central Music Scene, which I thought was quite catchy and simple, and would appeal to my target audience as well as being something that would stick in people's minds when it came to establishing the name as a well-known brand.

The layout I have chosen is quite simple so as to not confuse the information on the page, making it appealing to the eye yet also easily readable which I think will benefit my target audience. The layout also draws focus to the right hand side of the page where the main flash is, with the entire middle section of the magazine covered by an image of a band 'Feedback' whose name I did not put on the cover as I wanted there to be an implication of prior knowledge for my magazine to show that it is specifically aimed at those who are already up to date with the indie/rock scene. The quote from the article which is part of the main flash was chosen as it gives an immediate impression of the content of the article, and also the tone of the band in question, creating the promise of an exciting read.

I chose my main sells specifically for my target audience, to be interesting and scandalous in turn, and aiming for the impression that the magazine is full of similarly worth-reading content.

I kept the colour scheme of the cover relatively simple, using a black/red/white theme which I think not only looks good, but exagerates the meaning behind the magazine quite well. Red and black tie in with the loud, aggressive sound of rock music, while the white brings order and refinement, making it look tidier and easier to read. I had originally thought about using red font on a black background, but then after studying some similar styles I decided that coloured fonts on dark backgrounds are quite hard to read, so changed it to black on red.

Above is another possible layout for my magazine front cover, I did not end up chosing this one for severl reasons: The masthead being an angle does not have as much impact as I had hoped for my music magazine, the colour sceheme, although contrasting nicely is not as rock-esque as I wanted, and the main flash was too simplistic in my opinion, only having one person makes it seem slightly boring. So after considering both covers and their impact on my target audience, along with getting some opinions from members of my target audience I decided to use the first cover upon which to base my final design.

This is the contents page I drew for my magazine, which I also tried to make fit in with usual music magazine contents pages, while at the same time different in order to establish individuality. I took a feature from the Kerrang! magazine contents pages, using an editor's note at the beginning to add a personal tone to the magazine, making the reader feel more at home and establishing a familiarity. The layout I have used is dissimilar to that of other music magazines in that it will only have one image, which will be outlining one of the more important articles. The reason I have chosen this is because I think having an visually-cominated contents page draws attention away from any wording, and will (from personal experience) start a reader off just flipping through the pages to look at the photgraphs and imagery instead of reading the articles. The way in which I have laid out the articles was done with the reader in mind, as I chose to use similar subheadings as several other music magazines in order to break up the information and make the page more reader-friendly.

These are the two pages I designed for my double-page article, the top page will be on the left, and the bottom will be the right. I decided to base my article around the layout of the NME magazine article that I analyzed, on the grounds that having an image dominated the first page creates questions about what the article is about, so makes the content seem more worth reading. The theme of my article will be an interview with the band 'Feedback' who will answer questions sent in by the readers, I think this kind of article is engaging to the reader, and further makes them feel connected to the not only the people behind the magazine, but also to the band in the article as if they were having the conversation with them. The columnular layout I have chosen for the main body of text was also a decision made with the target audience in mind, in an attempt to present it more formally as if it were a newspaper column, which is generally more plesant and easy to read than having the text mismatched and unordered.