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.
