Planning

Analysing Existing Logos


Planning Layouts of the Music Magazine I chose to plan out what I hope to make my magazine will look like. I thought it'd be essential to have the Masthead at the top to reminder readers what magazine they will be using. Also, adding main article images to catch the reader's eye and reduce the cover lines by making them only have one section.

Contents Page

Front Cover Page


Double Page Spread



Font Experiments For the front cover, the person I have used on the front cover I used various fonts to see what would look better. I picked the third one because it looked more effective with the letters being separated and having pattern hanging from the words to create effect.

Logo Design
For the main title I decided to call it 'Crank!' meaning 'An eccentric person, esp. one obsessed by a particular subject or theory.' I wasn't sure of any other names so I decided to stay with this. As I thought it went well with what I'm trying to produce. (Rock/metal genre music magazine) I decided to put an exclamation mark at the end to emphasise my magazine is loud by heavy music compared to other genres.

1) This font called 'Defused' I chose because it's cracked and gives off a rebellious approach because there's also missing parts of the font so it may also represent the loss of identity someone may be able to relate to that listens to the Rock/Metal genre.

2) I found another font called Ascent To Stardom. However I didn't like this because the font looked slightly blurred and didn't show its high resolution. Also I thought it resembled America with the stars and the eagle wings on each side. So I thought it wouldn't go well as my music magazine is supposed to be British.


3) I saw another font called 'Top Secret', I thought this looked quite good because of it's boldness and also how it has a border surrounding the image. However, once putting it onto my music magazine, I disliked it and it didn't look appropriate for the genre of music I am creating for. Instead I wanted a font that would be able to emphasise the loudness and aggression that can be expressed through this genre of music. So I used the first font displayed above.

I used this font "All Ages," for the word Contents for my Contents page, as well as for the number and sub-heading of artists used, which are all on my Contents page.

Images For my magazine I took various pictures that would help make my music magazine look professional. However, I had to edit them afterwards.

Contents Page
BEFORE                                                                   AFTER

I took the image in front of a green screen, originally I was going to replace it with another background, but instead I thought to leave it white, creating more effect as the main image on the contents page, as seen in After. I cropped the green background out and filled it white.

BEFORE                                                                                        AFTER
 I took this picture at a concert I had gone to in the previous month. As in the Before picture you can see hands and cameras, which made it look unprofessional as well as others in the background that aren't the main perspective. Therefore, I cropped the image in Photoshop making it better and the singer being the main focus.

BEFORE                                                            AFTER

           This image I also want to use on my contents page, there isn't much difference but I decided to crop the picture to make the artist the main focus instead of having space around him too much as in the Before picture shows. Therefore, the After picture will fit better on my contents page as I am using a few images to catch the reader's eye.

I also was going to use this image of a group of people I had taken a picture of as my feature band on my double page spread to also be on my Contents page.

However I changed my mind, due to the first layout of my contents page I disliked and found I had a lack of space and was mostly covered in images. However, this might interest readers more by having a variety of images but then it would stop me from adding Coverlines of the features that would be expected to be seen in the magazine.

So then I removed the image of the featured band for my double page spread, and instead centred the two bands I had taken pictures of from a concert, I also decided to add red borders around the images to look more effective instead of being on the plain background of contents page. However, at the bottom of the page I had space remaining where I was intending of putting an Editor's quote featuring the front cover of the magazine, such as Kerrang! magazines do. Unfortunately, I didn't have enough space to add this. Also, I noticed I didn't have many coverlines compared to an actual music magazine so I decided to add some more which will also take more space up.
BEFORE

AFTER

Front Cover

ORIGINAL                                            PROGRESS 
 
FINAL
 For my front cover I am using one main image of someone playing the guitar, there's no direct mode of address but it shows how he admires music hence playing an instrument. For the Progress image, I cropped out the green screen background and filled it white once again on Photoshop. Then for the Final image I used a Rendering effect on Photoshop using a lighting effect of a spotlight to make it look like the person is performing at a concert, which has often been seen on metal/rock music magazines. (See picture below)

Double Page Spread


 The image above is the original image, however I used try-outs(see below) by cropping the background out and filling it either white or black. As this is the only image I'd like to use for my double page spread, I want it to fill the page and be able to fit an article onto it as well. I decided I didn't like it with a white or black background, so then I decided to go back to the image with the original background.

This image I cropped out the blinds cord in the background,which was white and could clearly see.
This is my final image that I will use for my double page spread.

Try-outs:.

     One way I was thinking of layering the double page spread was having the image on 2/3 of the page and then an article beside it. However, the image looked stretched and I didn't think the font looked right. So, instead I changed it back to the original way I chose the double page spread layout to be like.