Completed Draft Magazine: Self Review

 

Despite slightly veering away from what I had originally wanted to achieve with my first draft, I think that these designs work well enough and are okay for a mock. As my cover star was wearing a red top, I couldn't have a colourful background much like I wanted, nor could I use purple, and due to lack of time I couldn't create any amazing visual effects, and so left my photos unedited and didn't think about the new colour scheme as much as I could have done. My front cover began as my flat plan had indicated, but one of the teachers in the Media department gave me some advice whilst adding the final touches, and so this changed last minute. I was originally going to use the photo of my model with her fist in the air, but I was told that it didn't make the layout easy to work with because it wasn't a central image. I was also told about the different styles of layouts and that an 'F' layout would work best with the image I had, and so I placed the text accordingly to fit this style, although I may stray from this when creating another piece as I want to be experimental. I didn't realise that I couldn't use the masthead font throughtout, and so choices of different fonts were rushed and not well thought out after I became aware of this. The idea of having text placed over a block of colour (specifically a black rectangle) was brought to my attention by Kerrang! magazine, and almost my entire contents page was influenced by NME magazine. My double page spread was once again influenced by Kerrang!, and after making my article a bit longer and adding some pull out quotes, I don't think that there are many alterations I would still need to make, other than choice of fonts and colours, as I think the style of image and layout work well together (unless I decide to change the layout completely). I don't want my contents page to look boring, and so I will not stick to a black, white and red colour scheme next time, as I think this is done too often, but I think it fits in nicely with a genral rock theme. I don't like the text underneath the image because I think there isn't enough of it, but I think that there is too much text down the side, and I will research into some different contents page designs so that I can create a unique, new style. Overall, I think my draft magazine gives off a very Kerrang! vibe, despite the fact that there is limited text on the front cover, which is something I will try to stay away from next time, as I want my magazine to look a bit more quirky and classic 'punk', rather than mainstream pop rock and 'emo', and so I will take some ideas from the 80's and the 90's magazine Ray Gun, although recent music will heavily feature and this will include a range of different rock music. I think that this will work better than what I have done because it will be similar to Kerrang! but will also be completely different.