Photo editing

This is a before and after of the image i plan to use in my magazine, the image on the right is my final outcome edited in photoshop.


I first use the dodge to to add highlights to the photo because of the lack of lighting when i took the photo it looked flat so the dodge tool was perfect for adding depth.






I then change the contrast of the photo to give it even more depth.







I then used the posterise tool to create the effect for my final image.

Photos

This is the image i plan to use for my front cover, it was created using a by slowing the shutter speed on a digital camera and moving a light in front of it causing the light to become blurred and distorted. The image did start out as individual letters but i used Photoshop to merge them together. I choose to this image because as with most genres of music my genre has strong links with art. I feel that this image is more artistic than having someone posing for a photo. I also found hard to find someone to photograph that i could link to my genre well. Instead of trying to focus an artist from my genre i thought it would be easier to take a photo such as this.Also i wanted my front cover to be different from other music magazine front covers, after researching magazines from the same or similar genres i discovered it was hard to find a conventional front cover like a traditional band photo, this is one of the reasons i decided to use the photos i did. In my opinion the photo works well as it incorporates both the controversial and artistic side of the genre. I thought it would be useful to examine some of the album artwork of two artists in the genre too see if there were any trends or themes i could incorporate into my magazine.
Studying the artwork from the two album covers has help me confirm that the photo on my front cover is relevant to Dubstep, i
have found that a lot of the artwork associated with the genre or used by artists has a 'Technological' influence, often featuring mechanical imagery or some form of electronics. This is why i think my photo on the front cover fits in well with the genre as it has a similar look to the album covers i have looked at. And hopefully it will appeal to my target audience because of the similarities it shares with the artwork of already successful artists in the genre.












I plan to use one of the these three photos as the image on my double page spread. The images are supposed to represent a 'party animal' as my main article asks what effect dubstep is having on its listeners. I think the non serious style of the photo will appeal to my target audience. I plan to edit these photos quite heavily in photoshop before putting them in my magazine by this time hopefully the images will look fairly surreal. From research into the genre i have found that it is not uncommon to see something unusual or unconventional in either magazines or artwork, this is why i have decided not to use photo of a human and instead use a subject that doesn't necessarily fit in with a traditional double page spread photograph, this is something that i think will appeal to my target audience.

Below i have featured a cover from Mix mag, a dance music magazine that often features articles on dubstep. This particular cover features subject matter very similar to mine so i believe it is relevant to include this as evidence because it shows that the image i have featured on the front cover of my magazine will both represent my genre well and appeal to my target audience since i have already established that my magazine and mix mag share very similar target audiences.

Below i have an example of a front cover from DJ magazine, since most Dubstep artists will also perform live Dj sets as well as produce music, i think it is fair to say that my magazine and this one will share similar target audiences. I have used this example because this front cover also doesn't feature a traditional photo of a person. I believe that because of the fact that my genre and genres it is associated aren't always conventional it allows me to use the images that i have and still appeal to my target audience.

Flat plans.

I think the overall layout of my magazine front cover is fairly simple, i choose not to have too much going so not to make the cover looked to cluttered. I decided to use a graffiti style font for my mast head as i think this will appeal to my target audience, i also think that an interesting font will have more chance of drawing in a reader in then a plain, boring font. I have decided to repeat the name of the genre 'Dubstep' all over the page to make it clear to readers what the magazine will focus on, i also hope that this will attract someones eye who is interested in the genre and encourage them to read the magazine. I want my front cover to have a black background and bright fonts so the important information on the page stands out. I plan to use a different font from the mast head font for all the headings and sub headings purely because i believe this will look better than using the same font all over the page. I have made the picture for my front cover artistic as i think this will appeal to my target audience more so than a picture you might find on the front of a pop magazine. ATM magazine one of the magazines i researched that focuses on the same genre, has articles that focus on art and fashion associated with the genre, it is for this reason i choose to use an artistic photo on the front cover.


Again i want to keep things simple on my contents page i want to display all the information in a way that's clear and easy to read, I think that how i have laid out the information on this page enables the reader to find out articles are in the magazine and allows them to navigate to their chosen page quickly, this will kept the audience interested and not frustrate them. Similar to my front cover i want to use darker, more subtle colours for the background to make the foreground standout more. I want my subscription offer to stand out in this page more than anything else.










I want the left page of my double page spread to be completely filled with my photo, and the right hand side to be all text. I am not going to try to break up the text on this page as i feel that my audience is old enough to cope with a full page of text. i want to use the same font for the headings that i used on my front cover so my audience can become familiarised with the font and so it is easily recognisable. On the right page of my double page spread i want to use a three or four column format rather than having a massive chunk of text.

Fonts

For my mast head i have decided to use the font Most wanted by Koczman baint.

i decided to use the font not only because i like how it looked, but also because i think the graffiti style relates to the genre of my magazine. Graffiti is an underground artform and as i want my magazine to focus on undeground genres of music therefore i think it is a very suitable font. I looked at two popular dubstep artists and their album artwork and found that they had also included graffiti style fonts on their Cd covers, this is evidence that it will appeal to my target audience and i think essential that i feature similar fonts in my magazine. I have included some examples below.

For the my headings and sub-headings in my magazine i have decided to use Ice age by Florian doyen.

i decided to use this font because i think it is good to get some variety rather than using the same fonts throughout the magazine.

I have also decided to use the the font below for certain parts of my magazine such as the date and issue number. I believe that this font is reminisant of fonts that you might find in electronic music magazines. I though that using this font would be in keeping with my genre and appeal to my target audience.

i have decide to use Tahoma as the font for the text in my magazine.

Target Audiences

I decided to look at ATM magazine and K-mag although both these magazines were not featured on the NRS website i have found out about their target audiences through studying their own websites. Both ATM and K-mag are focus largely on underground electronic music as well as other mediums such as art and fashion that are associated with these types of music. This limits the audience to people who follow these genres of underground music which although may be small when compare to the audience size of more mainstream genres such as rock music it is steadily growing. As these genres are unlikely to be heard on radio or Tv except for specialised programmes, younger people are unlikely to be exposed to these genres of music. From what i have learnt looking at both magazines websites i feel that neither magazine is meant to appeal to younger people who have little knowledge of the genres the magazines focus on, instead both magazines appeal to a slightly older audience who are already keen followers of the genres the magazines focus on.

It is for these reasons that i have decided to not base my target audience on class, wealth or attracting new readers instead i want to appeal more to people who already have a good knowledge of the genre and want to expand their knowledge even more. Although interesting new readers is important i feel that this should not be a large part of my magazine.

To be able to target my audience more efficiently i decided to look at K-mag's Facebook page and study the fans so i have a better idea of my demographic. The majority of fans that have commented on K-mags Facebook our male, there were 27 male fans out of the 30 fans that i looked at. Another recurring trend with the fans was that many of them were from the united kingdom although some were from other places in Europe, they also seem to share similar the majority of fans were aged between 20-30. I found that many of the fans i looked at had great interest in both Dubstep and producing their own music within the genre. This information has help me further establish my target audience, because my magazine includes similar genres and topics to that of K-mag it allows me to assume that both K-mag and my own magazine share the same target audience. From what i have seen on K-mags face book site i can assume that my target audience will consist largely of European males with an interests with either the same genre of music of genres associated with that of my magazine.

Although Mix magazine doesn't include Dubstep as a regular topic in its article it does make some appearances within the magazine, this is why i thought it would be useful for me find out the demographic for Mix mag as it is likely we share similar fans. Mix mag's demographic showed similar results to what i had found out from looking at K-mag both the Ages and Gender of the fans reinforces my ideas of my target audience.

I thought it would also be useful to look at the Myspace page of an artist from my genre and see if there are any recurring trends with the sorts of people who follow the music. Decided to look at the profile of 'Benga' an artists who has gained more popularity in recent years and has enjoyed some mainstream success.
Although Benga's fans do seem to share some similarities with the fans of K-mag there does seem to be more diversity amongst the fans of Benga, this is probably due to his recent mainstream success, making him more easily accessible to the general public. But despite this many of the same characteristics have appeared once again amongst the fans of Dubstep.

Introduction

For this task we have ask to create a music magazine front cover, contents page and double page spread. The magazine will focus on a music genre of our choice. I have decided my magazine will focus on largely underground music such as drum & bass/dubstep. When it comes to making my magazine i will use the skills i learnt in the preliminary task to make this project a sucess. http://sdcmediaassamfry.blogspot.com/

mock up of title and contents page.

i tried to keep the contents page as simple as possible and display all the necessary information clearly.



















i like the layout of my first rough design so i decided to stick with the general idea and use it in my final piece.

Front page and contents.

This is the front page of my student magazine i like the background of the front cover, i think it is more intresting than

having a just a colour background. However i dont like the position of the subject in the photo and would like to change if i had the chance to do it again.

this is the contents page of my magazine. i have kept the same font as the frontpage as i believe this is better than having lots of different fonts. if i could go back and change anything i would try to find something more interesting for the background

pictures

i decided to use this image because i like the subject looks in this photo and it really portrays his emotion and personality

i decide not to use this one because i prefer the previous one.

As my ideas for the project developed i decided not to use either of these pictures and opted for ones i took at a later date.

Introduction

I have been asked to re-design a magazine cover for our college magazine. I have to include standard magazine components such as text, images and headlines that will appeal to my target audience, the students of sussex downs college.