Throughout the Media AS course, I have certainly obtained a variety of skills which consist of using Photoshop, how a music magazine front cover, contents page and double-page spread are laid out, presented using colour, image and text etc, in order to make it clear that it’s a music magazine, these factors were extremely important! Before the task of making a music magazine front cover however, we were assigned to produce a school magazine front cover, which was produced through looking at school magazine front covers, mainly looking at the main image, mast head and how it would appeal to your selected year group. I chose the year group ‘sixth form’ (which was possibly the easiest choice as I’m a Year 12 myself) and so I chose my mast head to be more refined, I did this by simply using the format “Times New Roman” which is, stereotypically, a seemingly more refined use of text which would appeal to an older age group. In this case, the oldest year group in the school.
Before thinking of an idea and creating the main image of the school magazine front cover. We firstly looked into what would most likely be on a front cover of a school magazine, in my case, for Sixth Formers, and so I directly looked into what would be and who would be shown on the front cover. In the end I chose my friend, another Year 12 student to be used to present my front cover. This would automatically make it easy to tell that the magazine was about something to do with students just by looking at the model, which most people would probably do!
Through gaining skills and being told by our teacher for what is needed of the main image, I successfully took a semi-close up shot of my friend while she was holding a notebook. Semi-close up shot means that the person in the image is only being shown from their head to their shoulders, or slightly lower which would be just above the elbows. As long as the face of your model was, not precisely in the middle, but around the centre of the front cover, so that the attention would be drawn to them, it would work well. Through this knowledge, I was successful in getting a relevant image for my front cover, while at the same time making it look professionally planned and done.
As the use of colour is another main factor for any magazine, I chose to use the colours which represent my school in some way. I chose the school uniform colour as this would make it more specific for what school it’s made for. To my research, I found out that most school magazine front covers have the schools moto, the school badge and name. To reflect on this, I edited in the school badge to be at the top of my school magazine and also an obvious reference to the school’s name. My mast head was “V MAG” with the ‘V’ being carefully positioned on top of the ‘M’ in my use of originality for the name of the magazine. (The reference being the ‘V’ as my school’s name is Vyners School.)
The music magazine front cover however was of course different compared to the school magazine front cover. With this we had to look at music magazine front covers to inspire us for ideas, gain knowledge of what your front cover will be presenting. This being what genre music it represents, is based on and promotes. For my genre, I chose British Indie Rock to be used as the music genre. I chose this one because it appeals to me more, I would buy music magazines that promote British Indie Rock as a form of research and inspiration and I would certainly have a better understanding of what style I would have to consider, what colours would be associated and or link to the genre; Red for example would be a successful colour to use, not only because red is in the United Kingdom‘s flag, but red is a bold, strong colour that stands out. It‘s rebellious, the clothing style that my target audience would use would wear red a lot, with black etc. And also to relate to the ‘rebellious‘ feel, the music “British Indie Rock“ is a rather rebellious style of music in itself, not everyone likes it but the ones who do, abide by it, almost like being patriotic to the Union Jack of The United Kingdom. By seeing the colours of the Union Jack on the front cover of my magazine, British people would instantly feel a sense of patriotism and know the magazine would be for them. Like the magazine was made for them especially, this technique we also learnt in lesson in order to appeal to the target audience in a variety of ways, this being one of the most successful, particularly with this genre of music.
I would have also have had to consider the fashion concepts of the genre and a specific use of text to relate to the selected genre too, such as bold formats for the main sell lines to stand out on the page like the rest of the contents that make up the front cover. Photoshop took a huge part in this process to make both of these front covers (The school magazine front cover and the music magazine front cover.)
The front covers were made on Photoshop to look professionally made, to look like it belongs on the shelf with other top brand music magazines. This was simply to motivate us and to make us use Photoshop with all the skills we gained from using it to produce the school magazine front cover, which was clearly a good use of practice in order to work our way up to creating such a piece like a front cover for a music magazine. Over the course of making front covers, I believe I have gained an excessive amount of knowledge on the importance of research and planning towards this. There wouldn’t be a chance of making a professional magazine front cover without the timely use of planning from research and looking into a selected genre of magazines in order to do so. You would have had to understand completely everything about the genre you have chosen, as I said above, you would have to consider colour, text, image, models clothing and positioning of text and your own imagination on how to present these on the front covers, to show your originality and understanding when you need to write about the evaluation about your work, to show your understanding! In order to plan my final front cover, I had to obtain music magazines which, of course, related to my idea and what genre I’m planning to promote, I bought magazines such as KERRANG! and NME.
These are two of the top Rock magazines in the country / world, I chose to use them as reference because they both use a similar format and colours and the main factor being that they both promote the music genre, rock. It’s also more reliable for my planning because if these two magazines produce similar styles for each other, then the promotion of British Indie Rock / Rock that I have used for my magazine front cover, must be legit.
KERRANG! and NME magazine clearly appeal to the same target audience as each other as they both represent the same genre and also promote the same festivals, concerts, CD releases, solo artists and bands. By imitating these magazines for their use of text, colour and image; I believe I have successfully presented the correct factors which would be expected on a professional music magazine front cover. Following on from this, in order to please my selected target audience I would have had to consider these factors to relate to the genre, which would, ofcourse, relate to the target audience too as that is what they would expect to see on the front cover for this style of music genre. To add to the front cover, I’ve also taken pictures that I took while at a concert for the band “Coldplay” myself. From what I saw on most magazine front covers, they give a preview of many concerts and reviewing concerts and reviewing new CD releases. From personal knowledge, I know that “Coldplay” would be featured in a magazine such as this and so I used the image to my advantage for this particular front cover. As seen from the magazine ‘KERRANG!’ with their use of bold formats, outlandish colours and imagery, I have made my own picture from the gig look like it’s featuring a free CD give away, which they also gave away at the actual concert itself, which would make it look more reliable to the audience if it was true or not, which it is.
Once again, Photoshop has clearly been a large part for the process of this magazine front cover too, not only from using it, I have been learning from it throughout the whole creation process. This was mainly through previously learnt techniques and skills on how to edit imagery such as the main image of my model, place text where desired such as my main sell lines and clearly the main headline and how to make it obvious that it is the main headline on the front cover. By making this important factor legit, we would have had to consider looking carefully at the main headlines of magazines and how they stand out, by doing this we would have gained a sense of originality towards the making of their main headline, how they are going to create it on Photoshop by practicing and also making sure it looks professional, relates to the genre of music that the magazine represents and the style of text, such as the main headline for “KERRANG!” for example.
The text is always in a very bold format, upper case, either bright yellow or white, the letters are crumpled looking to make it appear like they’ve been smashed and also the meaning of the word “KERRANG!” itself, I learnt it through research on Google that it’s the sound like an electric guitar makes. The relevance to the music genre shown so strongly in the main headline inspired me to do so too, in the end I used the inspiration of the crumpled looking text, I did this simple by using the erase tool in Photoshop and erasing away at some of the letters on my main headline to achieve this effect. This again proves the important of modern technology to make this type of work look more professionally made because clearly, professional magazine producing companies and their editors use Adobe Photoshop themselves, this gains a sort of trust in the program as long as you have the experience with it and to have a clear understanding of how to use the variety of editing tools which Photoshop provides for you to use.
As I decided to use the theme “British Indie Rock” I decided my background to be the Union Jack, I chose this typical British symbol because I decided to take advantage of the fact that it has a centre. The way in which I did so was I carefully positioned my model to be in the centre of my picture by making sure it’s taken at semi-close up shot, this, from research would make it more reliable and show a sense of knowledge in taking photos while making sure it’s in a suitable position for the main image on the front cover. Through the simple process of cropping, editing in the Union Jack behind the image of the model, I made sure to position this successfully so that it looks like the model is the centre of the front cover and also the centre of the Union Jack which I believe would add to the effect that I’m trying to achieve, this being making it clear on that front cover that the image of my model is the centre piece of the front cover, I also lowered the opacity of the Union Jack that’s shown directly behind the model in order to make the model stand out more effectively while keeping it still clear that it’s a Union Jack in the background. In order to successfully make your model, the main image of your front cover this is done by, if desired, making her or him stand out effectively, so that the main image is what the audience is going to look at first, recognise and then look up to recognise the name of the magazine, which is what, stereotypically, most magazines aim to do. This is mainly because the target audience would always notice their idols and favourite musicians if it’s standing out successfully in this kind of way. If your main image isn’t the centre of attention when someone looks at the front cover, then it would be defeating the object of being ‘the main image’.
By using modern technology such as Photoshop, I clearly was able to successfully make my front cover look professionally made, edited with clear experience with using the program ‘Photoshop’ and overall making the whole piece of coursework look like it was made by a professional magazine editor for a British Indie Rock magazine editor, which is obviously what we were assigned to do, to work to our best ability by simply showing a legit understanding of using modern technology, simple being cameras and Adobe Photoshop, which is, backtracking from first experiences is hard to use at first for beginners. It is therefore clear that modern technology has an exceptional level of purpose in the process of making a computer based piece such as modern magazine front covers. Also from finding out in lesson and to use as a reference to support the fact that modern technology is important, the internet based magazine “Monkey” made by the magazine publishing company “Dennis” relies on the internet in order to be viewed by their target audience, to many people’s surprise, “Monkey” has a substantial amount of weekly views of up to thirty thousand people, this would mean that there would be no other way of producing this well-known magazine but by, possibly, using the program Photoshop or any other program that was made through modern technology which clearly supports why modern technology is important in this area of media, this being magazine front covers.
