5. Production

Final music magazine cover

I based my magazine cover on a wide range of different music genres. The main image I used is of a girl-band called 'The Soundwaves' who were used in my feature which was an interview on the band. The models are all stood the same & their positioning is quite casual apart from the hand gestures which were made to spell out the word 'LOVE'. I editing this photo using Photoshop and tried to make the hand gestures more sharp so that they stood out from the actual picture. I also edited the rest of the picture making it more clearer and airbrushed so that it looks more professional to the audience. I had to cut around the tops of 2 of the models head to go over the masthead making it look more 3D and effective. I also positioned my central image as close up and into the centre of the page as possible following the generic conventions of a magazine cover. I made the masthead the largest graphic on the cover as it should be one of the main features. I chose a text off of dafont.com that was quite plain but could  be easily edited so it stands out. I did this by using drop shadows and adding depth to the text. I made it a bold black as the buttons that I put underneath the masthead used most of the colours that I wanted to use in my scheme. I used a flash in the top right hand corner and made it 3D, saying free downloads. This draws the reader into the fact that there is something free on offer with the magazine. In the same colours I put a banner in  the bottom right corner with a feature on and put the rest of the features under a plus in the bottom left hand corner which spreads the information being put onto the cover out. The main article was called 'introducing The Soundwaves' I put this over the central image but not covering any main parts. I used the FX feature in Photoshop to make it stand out from the picture and coloured it a light teal colour.

Final contents page

My contents page is very bold and I think sums up the magazine very well as it features different genres of music and different types of people. I used a different colour scheme to my cover as I thought black and white looked very professional as they are classy colours. The photos I chose were of 4 different models, one looking very rock, another looking very girly, another looking r&b styled and one with an indie vibe. I rearranged the pictures in a way that would frame the rest of the text well and didn't draw attention away from the rest of the page. I haven't seen this style of contents page used in any magazine that I researched, so I made it like this as I wanted it to be unique and different. I made the background gradient from white, through to grey, then the top black. I wanted a dark background for my page but didn't want it to look tacky, plain or boring so I chose to do it like this. On the left side and the bottom around the edges I created an effect on Photoshop that made it look a bit more interesting and also framed the page. The masthead was a font that I fount on dafont.com and I rearranged the lettering so it wasn't all on one line. I saw this done on a contents of another magazine cover, I liked this idea so I used it but made it my own. Down the right hand side of my contents I put the featured articles and the regular articles, also a letter to the editor at the very bottom. As I had gradiented the background, I had to gradient the texts too making them a lighter colour at the top, and the bottom ones black so that they didn't blend in. I separated the sections with a bold black line that has the same appearance as the titles 'features' and 'regulars'. The features included exclusives that were in the magazine as a one off and the regulars were pages that are involved in every issue. At the very bottom was a letter from the editor, including a picture of me. I used a italic hand-writing like font for the title 'dear readers' and then used a normal font for the letter but had to make it really small so that it fitted in with the proportions of the page numbers and descriptions.

Final Article

I changed the colour scheme for my article to give the magazine some variety. I chose the font for my title 'the soundwaves' off of dafont.com then coloured it a dark pink on photoshop. To create the article I used Adobe Indesign. Underneath the title of my page is who wrote the article. I made the very first letter of my writing larger than the rest so that it stood out from the paragraphing. I had a large picture covering most of the right-hand page and then two smaller images with a drop shadow effect. I put a box at the bottom the same colour as the title with the page number, magazine title and the month the magazine had been published. Inside the article I had quotes in boxes that the girlband had said making this one of the first things that the reader see's, drawing them into the article.