Magazine title mock up

 

Magazine title mock up



Front cover photo style

Magazine title

I have been trying to think of potential magazine names since I started my pre-lim work. I was looking at musical terms such as pause and note however I do not think this links with the type of magazine I am trying to portray. I have also searched through da font as they have a wide variety of name that could influence me. I finally found a title that I was fond of completely randomly when thinking for a name. I think this title fits in perfectly with the type of magazine I am creating. I now have to choose the font I would like for my title.

Audience profile

Billy is 19 and lives in London. He has taken a gap year after his A-Levels and is working at a HMV music shop in the centre of the town. The shop stocks a whole range of music CD's. He had been going to the shop as a customer for several years before applying for a job there during his A-Levels. He has a particular interest in hip hop, including modern hip hop artists such as Kanye West. He also likes some dubstep artists like Skrillex and flux pavilion. Working in a music shop he sponged music knowledge in all genres, whether that be up and coming music or new album releases. He regularly goes to see his favourite artists when he can and takes inspiration from there styles. He likes meeting up with friends, and travels to see his old friends as much as possible. He is always on facebook and twitter, where he also follows his favourite artists, He is able to keep up to date with the latest news and gigs. He attended V festival two years ago and is planning to go again with all of his college friends next year. His fashion reflects his style of music taste so he buys his clothes from shops such as Billionaire Boys Club and Stussy, however when working he wears a uniform given to him buy the shop manager which he customises to fit his style. He collects shoes such as Nike air Jordan's which he wears most days. He tends to buy a lot of music magazines such as complex and vibe wear he can also keep up to date with the music artists he likes. He usually pays around £3 for his magazines which he buy weekly and he think this is an acceptable price he is more than willing to pay for the content he revives, but he doesn't think he should pay any more than this for a weekly addition as the magazine contains around 60 pages per issue. However he would be prepared to pay more for a monthly magazine that contain more content being around 100 - 150 pages. He plans to go to university in London and to hopefully develop his interest in music studying media. He is also good friends with an up and coming artist in London and often goes to his concerts.

Colour Palette Red black white

Audience profile inspiration

Useful site to help with your audience profile - UK Tribes. It will help you categorise what 'tribe' you are and, more importantly, what your intended readership will be:


http://uktribes.com/

Intresting use of shadowing

Magazine pitch animoto

Colour palette grayscale

Tips and advice layout

The first colour is white. The second colour is black. The third colour is red. Calligraphers and early printers grasped this over 500 years ago and experience has proved them exactly right. White for background, black for text, red for accent and excitement. These three colours are the best . Be very careful with all other colours.

Roger Black (designer of Newsweek, Time Out, Esquire, National Enquirer, Rolling Stone)

A cover should be a poster. A single image of a human will sell more copies than multiple images or all type. Always has, always will. Think about why.

Roger Black

Never set a lot of text type in all caps. After a while, it’s just too hard to read.

Roger Black

Use only one or two typefaces. Italian design is the model: a strong sense of a few things that work together. Avoid a free for all of multiple fonts/colours.

Roger Black

Get lumpy! The trouble with most design is that it has no surprise. If you want normal people to pay attention, you have to change pace in your presentation. Monotonous rhythms of picture, headline, picture, text, ad, headline, picture, ad, etc. Is like a pudding without raisins – a stew without lumps.

Roger Black

Break up type to add interest

Chris Frost – Designing for newspapers and magazines

Don’t use too many typefaces. Too much variation will end up looking a mess. It’s best to limit yourself to one font, and variations of it.

Chris Frost

Emphasise your entry point, with larger intro type, bold faces, drop letters, etc. Choose your entry point with care, and make it the focal point of the page.

Chris Frost

Even mediocre photographs attract an audience and a good news picture, even on an inside page, may attract 80% of the readership.

Harold Evans – Pictures on a Page

Just switching type face from serif to sans can result in massive differences in reader comprehension, and response, to advertisements

Colin Wheildon – Are you communicating, or just making pretty shapes? (2005)

There are few major newspapers in the English speaking world today which use the sans serif type for the body text. Conversely, many major magazines choose sans serif. Serif faces have long been regarded as highly readable. One theory is that the serifs acted as tram lines, keeping the eyes on target. Another was that the modulated thick and thin strokes of serif types provided greater opportunity for individual letters, and hence words, to be distinguished and read.

Colin Wheildon

Responses to text in printed colours showed a considerably lower level of good comprehension.

 81% said they would prefer to read the page of coloured type because it was more attractive. But the test results clearly show that in practise, they found coloured text more difficult to read. It was attractive to look at but did not make a good reading environment.

Colin Wheildon

Editors and designers are the missing link between the ape world and man.

Colin Wheildon

Every picture should have a caption. Readers get very irritated if they cannot find the caption. But the caption must not state the obvious. A picture of a vicar pouring a cup of tea, should not have for its caption: Vicar, pouring cup of tea. Captions should add to the information in the photo, not re-state it.

Many music mags use witty, tongue-in-cheek  captions.

Type size for the body of an article should be between 9-14.  (not the headlines, standfirst, crossheads etc). Some newspapers go down to 8, and many would consider that anything above 11 is too large, wastes space, and patronises the reader. 9 is the most common size.

Colours text on background

Black on white is still the easiest way to present type and to read it and you change that colour at your peril. Using coloured paper, coloured type or a heavy type patch often reduces legibility. In tests carried out by Karl Borgrgrafe (cited in Favre and November 1979) to see which colours worked best together, the following taxonomy of colour mixes was discovered, starting with the most legible, and working through to the least legible.

Black on yellow
Yellow on black
Green on white
Red on white
Black on white
White on blue
Blue on yellow
Blue on white
White on black
Green on yellow
Black on orange
Red on yellow
Orange on black
Yellow on blue
White on green
Black on red
Blue on orange
Yellow on green
Blue on red
Yellow on red
White on red
Red on black
White on orange
Black on green
Orange on white
Orange on blue
Yellow on orange
Red on orange
Red on green
Green on orange

As you can see, black and white comes pretty near the top although the list suggests that a yellow panel behind the black type would improve legibility (which is why important warning signs of danger are usually printed black on yellow.)


From: Designing for Newspapers and Magazines, by Chris Frost, Routledge, 2003


Note: though black on yellow may be more striking than black on white, it is unlikely to be more pleasing in large quantities. Magazine designers have to strike a balance between legibility, impact, and reader satisfaction.
Between getting attention, and not being annoying.

Double Page Spread Analysis

Magazine Contents Page Analysis

Magazine cover analysis

Glossary

Masthead – The name and logo of the magazine.
The Lead – the introductory paragraph of an article. Usually written in bold or capitals.
Body copy - refers to the text of your written articles, which should be produced as a printed presentation to

accepted industry standards, e.g. correct use of language, font size, word limits etc. Usually written in columns.
Serif font – fonts like Times New Roman, or Baskerville Old Face, which have little bars on the end of the letters.

Sans serif font – fonts like Impact, or Agency FB, which do not have little bars (serifs) on the end of the letters.
Drop Capitals – Really big letter, which start off an article.
Cross Head – Small sub-heading used to split up a large block of text.
White Space – white parts of a page other than text or pictures.
Mode Of Address – How the magazine talks to the audience.
Sell Lines – Text on the cover that helps to sell the magazine to the audience. Kerrang!’s sell line is “life is loud”.
Banners – text, which stands out because its on a coloured background.
House Style – a magazines distinctive design that distinguishes it from its competitors.
Borders – the gaps at the edges of the page.
Gutters – the gaps between the columns of text.
Leading - the space between lines of text.
Kerning - the space between letters.
Strap Lines – a smaller headline, printed above the main headline.
By-lines - name of the person who wrote the article. Picture Credits - where did the photos come from,

or who took them.
Anchorage – The way in which text helps to pin down the meaning of a picture and visa versa.

Moodboard

Schedule

Font Ideas

I want to use quite simplistic, bold font that will make my magzine stand out to my target market. I'd like the magazine masthead to be of a decent size spreading across the width of the magazine so walking  customers can see the magazine from faraway and it can standout when placed alongside other magazines on the shelves.The masthead will be in capital letters and in condensed font in order for it to stick out, for cover lines, titles and article. I would like a neat straight edged font that will fit the rest of my magazine and the design I am aiming for. 

Here are some of the kinds of fonts I may use, I have used www.dafont.com to find them.

Inspiration

 

Rule of Thirds and Golden Spiral

So, the first "golden" rule is the "Rule of Thirds" or "Golden Ratio". It affects the ratio (1:1.618) of a picture size, as well as the placement of the main subjects in the photo. This ratio is close to the 35mm ratio, so you don't need to change the size of the photo in most cases. But you need to consider the composition: main subject should lie on one of the four lines or four intersections (subject's eye for example). Truthfully speaking, these rules are not always the same. Rule of Thirds is a simplified version of the Golden Mean. 

Another rule is the "Golden Triangles". It's more convenient for photos with diagonal lines. There are three triangles with corresponding shapes. Just roughly place three subjects with approximate equal sizes in these triangles and this rule will be kept.

And one more rule is a "Golden Spiral" or "Golden Rectangle" (you'll see why it's a rectangle in the tools section). There should be something, leading the eye to the center of the composition. It could be a line or several subjects. This "something" could just be there without leading the eyes, but it will fulfill its purpose anyway.

Design Layouts: Z & F Pattern

Several layout patterns are often recommended to take advantage of how people scan or read through a design. 3 of the more common are the Gutenberg diagram, the z-pattern layout, and the f-pattern layout.

The pattern applies to text-heavy content. Think pages in a novel or a newspaper. The pattern isn’t meant to describe every possible design.

The Gutenberg diagram describes a general pattern the eyes move through when looking at evenly distributed, homogenous information. Read that last part again.
The pattern applies to text-heavy content. Think pages in a novel or a newspaper. The pattern isn’t meant o describe every possible design.
The Gutenberg diagram divides the layout into 4 quadrants.

• Primary optical area located in the top/left
• Strong fallow area located in the top/right
• Weak fallow area located in the bottom/left
• Terminal area located in the bottom/right

The pattern suggests that the eye will sweep across and down the page in a series of horizontal movements called axes of orientation. Each sweep starts a little further from the left edge and moves a little closer to the right edge. The overall movement is for the eye to travel from the primary area to the terminal area and this path is referred to as reading gravity.
Naturally this is for left to right reading languages and would be reversed for right to left reading languages.
The Gutenberg diagram suggests that the strong and weak fallow areas fall outside this reading gravity path and receive minimal attention unless emphasized visually in some way.
Important elements should be placed along the reading gravity path. For example placing logo or headline in the top/left, an image or some important content in the middle, and a call-to-action or contact information in the bottom right.
Designs that follow Gutenberg are said to be in harmony with natural reading gravity.
The claim is these designs improve reading rhythm, by being in harmony with the natural reading rhythm, as well as improving reading comprehension, but there’s little empirical evidence to support the claim.
Again Gutenberg describes large blocks of text with little typographic hierarchy. As soon as you create a visual hierarchy the diagram no longer applies. Keep this in mind with the other patterns described here.

Magazine work for A level

http://petesmediablog.blogspot.com/

One of the most popular coursework tasks at A level is to make all or part of a magazine. For the OCR specification, this involves producing the front cover, contents page and a double page spread from a new music magazine. Usually, the task is done individually. You can work in a group of up to four people, but if you do, you have to produce the equivalent number of editions of the same magazine in a 'house style'. What I cover here is particularly of relevance to the music magazine task, but the ideas could be applied in relation to other types of magazine assignments.

Many centres choose this task because they think it will be easier to manage than video work, which may be the case, because more of the task is 'desk-bound'; this is probably true, but in my experience this task is extremely hard to do well and needs a lot of careful planning, organisation and preparation, as well as the ability to stand back from your work, take criticism and admit when you have got it wrong.

Lots of students do lots of good research for this task, but very few seem to be able to carry that research through to the final production to make something that shows they understand conventions. I think for this task, you need to consider both the magazine as a whole and the three components you have to make. So that means looking at the overall style and conventions of real magazines but also looking closely at the specifics of front covers, contents pages and double page spreads.

You might start with magazines in general and then home in on music magazines more specifically, but you need to end up looking at the sub-genre for the target audience at which you are aiming. It is very easy to get it completely wrong by trying to replicate the conventions of one sub-genre when really your audience belongs to another.

A search through google images for 'music magazine covers' gives you a good range to look at- though be careful, as you can see, some of these have been mis-filed!




The same is true for contents pages and double page spreads, though what you begin to notice is that this search also includes examples of student work, from their A level blogs!





It is really important that you look carefully at all elements of the magazine that you are being asked to produce to ensure that you really understand exactly what the conventions are and why they are there. A good way to do this is to annotate your research material as research evidence. But remember when you come to produce your own, use that annotated model and really look at it, rather than just forgetting it!

Here's a basic annotation of a cover from a student blog



Covers are usually the easiest bit to get right, but you still need to think carefully. Where is your masthead going to be? there's a reason that they tend to be at the top and from the left- that's to do with how the magazine will be displayed in a rack in the shop. If you put it elsewhere on the cover, in effect your logo/branding becomes hard to find. Why do we need a barcode and a price? What's the point of a strapline and how many of the features need to be flagged up for us on that cover? If you look at a few different magazines, certain patterns start to emerge.

Look at the colourscheme and the use of fonts- how many different colours are used on the text and how many different fonts are used? They may be different sizes but they don't vary that much. Look at the picture chosen- usually the model will be looking at the camera and in turn the viewer. Think about how that image has been posed and the probability that many images will have been taken to select from. Then consider the layout of the whole thing. How much can the model overlap the masthead without a loss of identity for the brand?

Contents pages often go wrong, but again a few simple observations will help you a lot.



This edition of Q magazine is quite typical. There is a main picture of a band from one of the lead articles and a smaller one of Nick cave from another section, so a visual sense of some of the variety to be found that month. There is a lso a list of what's in the magazine which extends to at least fifteen examples, with several elements to the 'Oasis Special!'. This gives us a sense of the value for money that we will get from the magazine. Surprisingly often, a student contents page will only feature half a dozen items, but who would pay good money for such a small publication?

Note also the use of colour and font here- it is clean and limited- simple, despite the amount of detail. The whole layout is in columns, with boxes being used to guide the reader's eyes. Your contents page needs to do the same, whatever genre of music you use. There is also repetition of the logo from the cover, smaller, but a reminder to the reader, as well as a link to the magazine's online presence at the top. All this needs to guide your thinking when you make a a magazine.

Finally, the element where most students 'come unstuck' is the double page spread. there may be a lack of clarity as to what this might mean, as some students just seem to see it as an opportunity to make any two random pages from the magazine (I've even seen a horoscope page!). What it should be is a feature article which gives you the opportunity to show what you can do with text, image and layout.

This NME example with Lily Allen is one way of approaching it. Note that the image stretches across the border and the amount of text is limited, with quite a striking use of 'blackmail note' titles.



It is nonetheless, still quite clearly built in columns and the image would again be the result of choosing from a large number taken at a shoot. You might opt for a multi-image approach, but again you need to base it clearly on real examples and to make your text size appropriate. Quite often students choose a font that is much too big, in order to fill the page, which immediately makes their work look like it does not understand conventions. Finally, the text itself needs careful thought and multiple drafts. All writing needs proofreading so that there are no spelling errors! In the real world, you'd get the sack if there were as it would make your magazine a laughing stock!

Throughout the process, you should keep full records of everything you do- all your research, your planning step by step, revisions and drafts. As much visual material as you can gather will hold you in good stead.

School pre-lim magazine