Saturday, 20 March 2010

Music Magazine Contents Page and Preliminary Contents Page

To the left is my preliminary contents page. To the right, is my more developed music magazine contents page?


Makeup

The makeup for the preliminary was very minimalistic. In fact, no make-up was necessary for the images used. However the makeup for the front page ‘shown at the bottom left hand corner’ as a subscription had to continuously be retouched. This applies to all the images. This is because the music magazine was more planned, as so therefore, time had to be taken into account, of the models appearances. The makeup for the model was very important because the aim of the image on this page is to ‘invite’ the reader into reading the article, and to attract the reader.


Model

Finding the model was not too difficult, because it was the same artist used for the front cover. There is an image of another ‘featuring artist’ at the bottom of the page. Finding this model was a bit more difficult, because this person is ‘Rebecca’, who was a member of Triple R, before they split up. So this model had to look like a 'Rebecca', and she had to look similar to Rochelle, because she was supposed to be in a band with her previously. The models used for the music magazine, could have literally have been anybody, as long as they looked the part.


Mode Of address.

The mode of address differs a lot, in comparison of the two contents pages. The mode of address for the students, are school uniform, and smart coats worn, whereas the clothing worn on the models in the music magazine, are glamorous clothing. This aspect of glamour is perceived through the fur coat, worn by Rochelle, and the image of Rebecca, sitting on a posh leather chair. This aspect of glamour is important for my particular magazine due to the target audience of my magazine; my target audience is young females, who are interested in music, and fashion. This is why my magazine has an aspect of fashion in it. Also the artists used


Layout

Both contents pages contain three images. The preliminary contains one image of sixth form students outside a school, which identifies the social side to school; two girls communicating in front of the school welcome board connotes a good, social environment of the school. To the left of this is another image of school children presenting an assembly. This also gives a good working environment to the school. The last image of of two school children, playing the piano, which indicates the different abilities throughout the school. All three images include more than one person, and no eye contact between the reader and the images are made. This differs from that of the music magazine contents page; eye contact is made with all three images. This is because the aim of these images is to engage interest in the reader, rather than to prove the abilities of the school and the students. The main image on the contents page is of the artist, who is also shown on the front cover; there is also a page indication on this image. The first image on the school magazine does include a student, who is shown on the front cover, however the other student shown, is not the same. This is quite confusing, and there is no page indication. This is because the way school magazines are read, is slightly different to how music magazines are read. Parents tend to read from the contents, the necessary articles, where as for music magazines, the reader usually chosen what to read from the front cover finds it in the contents and read the preferred articles. On the contents page, the image of Rochelle, is the largest image on the page because i0t is the main story of the magazine, whereas, the images shown for the school magazine, have equal importance in the magazine, so therefore no images stand out.


Editing

There was a lot more editing involved in the production of the music magazine contents page. The music magazine took on average, two lessons to complete, while the school contents page took about a day. The school contents page was made purely in InDesign, and my knowledge of InDesign was limited so I made use of what I could. None of the images at the top of the school magazine were pre edited, I simply cropped the bottom of the images, and I did this in InDesign. The image at the bottom of the page; of the two school girls on a piano, was edited in Photoshop first. All I did was erase the background of the image, because it was an unpleasant colour, which made the school look dirty and old, which is not the image a school magazine should perceive. The contents page however required a lot of image editing and manipulation. The first image was cropped, brightened, the contrast was increased, the background was erased, and the spot healing tool was used to remove a spot from her neck. The second image to the left of the page is simply a clone of the front cover. The image to the right of the page was also edited. This is the only image, which is not of Rochelle. This is an image of Rebecca, from the band. The background of this image was erased, apart from the chairs, the image was brightened, and the contrast was increased. The saturation was decreased slightly and the image hue and temperature were increased, to produce the shown image. .


Problems

There were quite a few problems with the music magazine. This is because I used Photoshop, when I should have used InDesign. So simply putting text into columns was hard to do. Also all the boxes had to be made separately, and on different layers. There were too many layers for this one image, because I had used Photoshop. Also, originally, there was no white box behind the ‘Rochelle’s story’ information, and the text was very hard to read, so to overcome this, I inserted a white box, but I had to figure out where it would go in the layers; because It had to be above the images, but below the text, so that the box was positioned properly.


Time management

This contents page took a lot more thinking than any of the others, because there is a lot of information there, and a lot of things were on different layers, which became confusing. So, in that respect, it was time consuming to create, but I was able to finish the contents page on time.


What I learnt

I learnt not to use Photoshop for anything other than image manipulation, and the occasional text. I also learnt how to create boxes in Photoshop.

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