Q1 Evaluation Draft

During the research stage we looked at a variety of magazines and student examples. The better magazines were following the conventions and so i tried to use the conventions in my magazine. The reason the magazines that follow the conventions is because the producers of the magazine know what will make the target audience buy the magazine.

I have gone with a conventional 3 colour palette for my magazine as i feel this will make the magazine appeal more to my target audience which is 16-24 year old, my colour palette is red, white and black. The 3 colour palette gives the magazine a more professional look and i wanted to try and avoid making my magazine looking tacky and wanted to give it more of a sophisticated feel to it. I looked at magazines such as VIBE and 'Fader' to give me inspiration for my magazine as these magazines are similar to the one i wanted to produce.

 I chose to call my magazine Blitz as i wanted to call it Bliss but that was already being used by a magazine. So i decided to call Blitz as i thought the name suited the genre of my magazine, and it gives the magazine a sense of power as it is a powerful name. I put the masthead across the top of the magazine and used the font.... and changed it in to a bold font to make it stand our more, I put it in a black colour to make it fit in with my colour palette and due to it being on i white background i thought the black font would make it stand out more.

 I chose to layout my magazine with the photo in the middle of the page with the text down the left hand side as well as having a plus sign and some featured artist down the right hand side with a barcode and price in the bottom left hand corner. I chose to do this as i had seen magazines that used this layout and i thought it looked good and they were the same genre magazines as the one i wanted to produce. I had my artist in an outfit that suited the magazine; He was wearing a grey blazer and a red checked shirt. On certain photos i had him have the blazer undone with the shirt showing so that it would add more colour to the front cover but on other photos i had him close the blazer to give it a more sophisticated look. My final decision was to go with the photos with the blazer open and shirt showing this was because i felt it looked a more complete photo and the red shirt also fitted in with my genre as well as my colour pallet. My contents page layout was inspired by FADER magazine. I used i close up photo of two artists and placed it just under the 'Contents'. I placed a black background behind the picture to make it stand out more and make it the focal point of the magazine. I put the page numbers and features underneath the photo and underlined them with red lines, I placed the number '26' in a large font and located it in the middle of the two lines of features and rotated it to an upright position. I used the number 26 due to the fact that is the issue number of the magazine. I placed text such as the website and date in the top left and right corners in a smaller font so that they didn’t overpower the main focus of the page. My double page spread layout was a standard layout as the main image was placed on the left hand side and the interview with the artist was placed on the right hand side of the spread. I also placed a quote from the interview on the left hand side of the page on top of the image.

 My front cover has a mid-shot of my artist i chose to do this as this was the guidelines for the magazine and i also think this shot is the best one for the front cover. For my contents i decided to do a close upshot of two artists as i wanted to have the picture at the top of the page and i made the photo landscape and also put a black background behind the picture just to emphasis it more, I think that a background behind a picture makes it look better as well. My double page spread was a mid-shot as i wanted it to cover the whole side of the page and i believe the more traditional double page spread of the picture on the left and article on the right is the best one.

 My artist represents my genre by the style of clothes that he is wearing as these clothes suit the mainstream style. I.e. blazer and shirt. The way that my artist is posing also gives off a mainstream feel to it. On the contents page the two artists show a bit of cockiness in the way that they are close up to the camera and this presents a mainstream feel to the magazine.  The double page spread represents my artist as a mainstream figure, i have gone with one artist on the double page spread as he is the artist who the article is about and so he should be the main focus of the page.