CONSTRUCTION & DEVELOPMENT

Understanding Conventions

Understanding Conventions

I will now be commenting on the layout of my cover page, and where I drew inspiration from to create it the way I have done. I will also be commenting on how the presentation and layout of my magazine fulfils the needs of my genre.

Understanding Conventions

For our research and planning period, I had taken a look at various existing magazines for me to take inspiration from and use some of the characteristics from these magazines with some ideas of my own to create a unique magazine cover of my own. The existing magazines which I took a look out, were the magazines which stood out to me and had used simple but effective tools to make it most eye-catching. A good magazine can be recognised by the layout of things throughout the magazine, so the first thing I decided was that I would create a good layout across my cover, contents and double page spread. Earlier in the research and planning period I had taken a look at some existing magazine covers. When I was reviewing the Vibe,Q, Clash and Billboard’s magazine covers I noticed that they didn’t have borders, initially I thought that having a border around my cover would make my cover look better, but when I looked at these again, I decided I would not have a border. By looking at these covers I drew inspiration in terms of what would be my colour scheme for my whole magazine. When I had a look at Q magazine the red and black colour scheme caught my eye straight away so I decided this would be the colour scheme of my magazine.

Before creating my magazine I had made a plan which I would follow throughout when creating it through Adobe Photoshop. On most of the magazine covers I reviewed, I saw that the main focus of the cover was the image and most of these covers had a quote next to the image, so I used this as an inspiration for my cover, as it would entice people to buy the magazine to see what the artist is talking about, and why they have said this. I then added a quote so it would firstly make the overall look of my cover better and also it would make the reader more interested in buying it. When reviewing Vibe magazine I saw that it had an issue number, price, and date, so I took inspiration from this and added that within my cover beneath the barcode.

Understanding Conventions

When doing research into contents page ‘Vibe’ magazine was very influential in terms of me choosing the layout of my contents page. When I had a look at other contents page from other magazine’s they all looked similar and I did not want standard conventions so I used ideas from the ‘Vibe’ magazine, in terms of the simpleness and the positioning and layout of the actual contents on the page. I then took these ideas and manipulated the layout slightly. There is a caption on the ‘Vibe’ contents page next to  the image on the top left of the page, I took this idea and used it in my own so it can catch the readers attention, just as the ‘Vibe’ contents page caught my attention.

Understanding Conventions

The design and style of my magazine includes the style of my title and the props in which my artist is wearing. Because I want my genre to be recognised as Bhangra I have designed my title, which in itself gives away the genre, in a fancy way, along with the clothing of my artist which is asian type of clothing. My sub articles on the page also heavily influence my genre as they are related to the genre itself. On my contents I have added my logo which again represents my genre as it is fancy, and again the sub headings are all related to my genre. In terms of my double page spread fitting in with my genre, I had my artist dressed up with asian clothing which fulfilled the needs of my genre.