Music Magazine Front Cover Feedback

As with the school magazine front cover, I asked some of classmates if they could give me some feedback on my design and overall, there was more positive feedback than negative. The most common comment thats was made, was  that it keeps a clear colour scheme which is what I was aiming to do. After researching other music magazine covers one of the noticible factors that came up was the the vast majority of them have three main colours: Black, white and one other colour (usually red). Most of the negative comments where that it could be interpreted as a bit bland and boring. Which I think is true, however I didn't want to overload it with content to the point where it became messy.

My Music Magazine Front Cover

Vibe Magazine Analysis

Having finished my school magazine cover and contents, the next task is to create a music magazine cover so I have decided to research and analyse current  music magazine covers within the same genre of music as mine shall be. This issue of VIBE magazine follows the majority of conformities that most other music magazines do. For example, it predominantly uses three colours: Red, Black and White, which is common amongst successful music magazines. It uses different layers for the title, main image and the other text, which gives the magazine some depth and makes it stand out more clearly. Any extra space is crammed with other text about the contents of the magazine, i.e interviews, stories etc. Aswell as other articles that arent related to music but may still appeal to people who are a fan of this genre of music, which could help to broaden the target audience of the magazine.

Photoshop- Depth of Field Tutorial

This is a video tutorial that I created myself, outlining how to get a depth of field effect in post production using Adobe Photoshop CS5.1. The programs used in creating this consisted of Adobe Photoshop CS5.1, I used this program to actually create the effect demonstrated in the video, and Camtasia Studio 7, this program was used to record my screen as well as my voice and combined them together and published them straight to YouTube. YouTube was the video sharing site of my choice to upload to because of the fact that it was most compatible with Blogger, the site used for my blog.

I got a couple of people from my class to evaluate my Contents Page and there were more positives than improvements, which is pleasing. The aspects highlighted that I could improve on were about the photo, one being about how the student is dressed because it might end up not giving a positive impression of the school standards, I was the student in the picture and at the time of taking the photo I wasn't aware of the fact my shirt was hanging out which had a big impact when I opened the picture in Photoshop. I now know that it is something I have to factor in when taking a photograph. The other possible improvement was the location of the photo, I could have taken it with the front of the school in the background because so that it would be able for people to recognise it was the school.

I got a couple of people from my class to look at my magazine cover and evaluate on parts of the cover that they thought were either good, or could be improved to make the overall design more professional and appealing. One of the biggest points raised for improvement was the fact that despite the magazine being an autumn edition there wasn't much of a recognisable theme, for example there weren't any pictures of anything autmumn related, such as leaves or halloween. Also another point raised was the fact that the main title of the magazine (Poole Grammar School) should be bigger than the date of the issue (Autumn 2011) otherwise it doesnt look professional because the reader should be more attracted to the more important text, which in this case is the name of the school and majority of the topics covered in the magazine.

Contents Page

For the contents page I have a picture of a student standing triumphantly looking at the school, this connotes the idea of success which could be linked to pasing exams or simply passing through school itself successfully. I made the background picture black and white to keep it clean and simple, but also black and white usually adds a nice and artistic effect to photographs. i also blurred the background of the image to make the student stand out more and add depth to the picture. For the names of the different articles I used an alternating black and white font colour to make the text contrast with the background picture and make it stand out more, this is because it is probably the most important section of the page as it is the part that the reader needs to be able to see. Also at the bottom of the page I inserted text that reads "Finis Opus Coronat" which is the school motto and is used to associate the page with the school.  I used different layer styles and layer masks to add shadow and fade the left side of the text into the background, this is to give it a more subtle feel as if it is part of the background image.