Rough sketches of cover

Here are some cover designs to demonstrate the possible front cover that I could have. I asked my target audience and other people who read magazines about which design is the most conventional and would be suitable for my magazine.
The majority of the people I asked stated that the first one was the most successful cover design. This is because they felt the medium close up picture would attract the eye, and the articles are placed in hot spots which would lead the eye around the page.

Masthead fonts and colours

Here are several variations of my chosen masthead. I created each one of these myself using photoshop. I used a range of different fonts, backgrounds and colour schemes that I think represent the acoustic genre and would be eye-catching and appealing to my target audience.


(CLICK TO ENLARGE)



Next, I asked 20 members of my target audience which of these they preffered, and would best represent the magazine. The results were:

From top to bottom...

2
11 - the second from the top masthead.
1
2
3
1

Name research

I created a survey asking twenty people aged between 16 and 35 who liked the acoustic/folk genre which, from these possible names they thought were most suitable to represent my magazine.

Acoostic 7


Akoostic 1

Akoustic 3

mellowyellow 3

Adagio 4

Gentile 2



From these results, I can see that the name 'Acoostic' was the most popular. People I asked said that the idea of phonetics was clever and made the acoustic genre modern and so would represent my magazine, also the 'coo' had a soft tone, creating connotations of acoustic being soft and pure.

Outline demographic of my magazine

I plan to create a magazine of the Acoustic and Folk genre. There are very few established magazines that focus on Acoustic and folk music. However, this genre of music is very popular in modern culture, therefore a new acoustic music magazine would be popular and would gain a large circulation. By creating a fresh, modern looking magazine, I aim to widen the interest of this genre however still attract the traditional niche market of acoustic.

I will research and analyse existing magazines of this genre to establish the conventions required and then begin to plan and develop my own using the generic conventions of this genre.

Magazine front cover analysis

Here are two analysis' of Kerrang magazine and Q. These two magazines are very effective in showing the correct conventions required to make the cover suitable for their target audiences.

(click to enlarge)

Prelimary Task

As we started the course, the first task was to be introduced to InDesign, a desktop publishing programme. I familiarised myself with the programme by learning to use all of the tools provided.

Next, I began to research the conventions of a school magazine in order to create one that would appeal to all year groups by being fun, yet retaining the school's professional attitude.

Here is my finished magazine, along with an evaluation stating my strengths,weaknesses and overall feelings about my magazine.

Overall I was fairly pleased with the end result. Chenderit expects high standards in all aspects and so I believe that the magazine that I made had to reflect the professional attitude that Chenderit expects, whilst still maintaining the appeal for younger children. I chose a neutral light blue which would be suitable for all ages and genders. The happy expressions on their faces represents the excitement of school life which suggests that Chenderit is a fun place to be and also represents the magazine as being fun and quirky. I used this experience to familiarise myself with InDesign. I learnt a lot of techniques such as kerning and using columns to align the text. It was a very beneficial experience and I will use these skills acquired to ensure my music magazine is professional.