Contents page plan

Below was my first plan for my contents page:
 


















Later I decided the old plan wasn't good enough so I came up with another plan:

Contents page research

To begin my contents page, I had to look into how other contents page of existing magazine's were.

I looked at two different magazine content pages, they were 'Vibe' magazine and 'Q' magazine. Vibe magazine is a "Bi-monthly" magazine published by 'Vibe Media'. Q magazine is a monthly magazine and is published by 'Bauer media group'.
Both of the magazine's we're unique and had their individuality, to get a good idea of what the magazine's use most i got several content pages from each magazine.
Here are some content pages from 'Vibe' magazine:

 

Here are some contents pages from 'Q' magazine:

 As you can see both the magazines have large pictures on their contents page and you can identify each magazine separately because each content magazine looks similar for each edition of the magazines. You can identify the Q magazine contents magazine by their logo which is always on their content page. On the other hand you can identify Vibe magazine contents page by the V(stands for Vibe) on each contents page. Also Vibe writes 'contents' a different way from all other magazine so you can identify it that way.
After looking at these magazines, i started planning my contents pages using some of the elements used by both magazines.

Peer assessment

Last lesson we had to peer assess each others work, for this we had to move four places clockwise and once we were done with the first peer work review we had to move up one and we repeated this once again. Overall all of our work got reviewed by three different people.


Once i returned to my workspace i saw the comments that i got on my front  cover from my peers.

Most of the good points that was said about my front cover was:

• "Good, clear image"
• "Artists along the top is good"
• "Good use of colour"
• "Text used is good"
• "The main image is clear and does reflect the genre of the music magazine"
• "The colours used are consistent"
• "Effective heading"
• "I like the different sizes of font"

Some of the bad points about my front cover was:

• "Needs more text"
• "You could rearrange the text around. There is some blank space."
• "I think the space between the sentences near his head is too far apart"
• "I think there is too much space on the front page"

After reading these comments i figured that most things in the front page was looking alright apart from the space in the front page. To solve this i decided to fill in the gaps by adding more text to the front page. 

Front page construction

This is my chosen picture for the front page and I had to start by fixing the picture and for this i chose to use patch tool.

I started fixing the wall's uneven surface in the background using the patch tool.

I used the patch tool once again to sort out the shadows in the pictures.

Once the shadows and wall was even this is how the picture looked.

I decided to crop out the model so i used the select tool for this.

Once i selected the model i copied the selection and pasted it onto another layer.

I duplicated the orignal picture and desaturated it.

I placed the cropped picture over the desaturated picture to give it the effect shown above. The background has also changed colour to white/Grey and it looks natural.

Now i wanted to enter the magazine name 'Chronic' so used the text tool to do so.

I entered the title which was 'Chronic'

I duplicated the text to make it stand out more.

I started entering the main text.

I entered the second part in a larger size font to make it stand out as it is more important.

I entered the third part in a smaller sized font.

I entered the final bit of the main text in a larger sized font than the third part.

After that i entered another bit of text which is another feature article.

I started chaning the font size and colour to make it go with the house style of the magazine.

Once i finished the second piece of text this is how the magazine looked. I also started entering the feature artist names in the top left hand corner.

I entered the second feature artists name on the top left hand corner of the magazine.

Once i entered both names i aligned them so they had equidistant gaps and used the ruler tool to make sure they were straight.

This is how the text looked after i entered both the names and finished aligning.

Then i wanted to create a seperater between the names so i selected the brush tool and used a small brush size in black colour and made a dot with the brush.

I wanted to free transform the dot into a straight line so i had to use the 'free transform' tool which has a keyboard shortcut of 'CMD + T'.

I free transformed the dot into the straight line and aligned it between both the names.

Once i finished entering the name separators this is how the magazine looked.

Once i finished all of that i noticed that a bit of the glasses is missing from the cropping process so i decided to fix this.

I used the patch tool to fix the glasses.

Once i had finished the glasses i realised there were reflections of the flash on the glass rims so i decided to fix this.

Once i finished removing the reflections on the rims this is how the picture looked.

Then i noticed a flaw from when i cut out the picture of the model, there was a lot of light-reflection from the background that can be seen around the edges of the model's cut out picture.

To fix this i decided to use the sponge tool to desaturate the edges of the picture so the reflections of the original background cannot be seen in the picture.

This is how the picture looked once i finished desaturating the pictures.

Then i decided to enter a barcode so i got an image of the internet and added it as a new layer.

I merged the two layers that belonged to the barcode and renamed it as 'barcode' so i can easily locate the layer if i needed to find it.

Then i selected the brush tool and choose the white colour to colour over the numbers on the barcode to make it empty.

This is how the barcode looked once i finished removing the numbers.

I entered my new numbers to make the barcode different from the rest and i did this using the text tool.

Once i finished with the barcode i entered some text as one of the feature articles in the magazine.

I moved the text around then changed the fonts and colours to make them go with the house-style and look part of the magazine.

I added more text onto the front page to fill in the space and this is how my magazine looked at this stage.

Finally I inserted the price and issue using the text tool. Then I entered the magazine logo above the barcode. This is my finished magazine.

Target audience

UK Tribes (http://uktribes.com)

UK tribes is a website which was set up by the television channel 'Channel 4' as part of research. The research was carried out by 'Crown DNA' for 'Channel 4' to categorise the young people in the UK into different groups and explain to us what each category does.
Below are some of the categories from the website:

Aspirant Mainstream- Aspirant mainstream is the type of kids who will spend a lot of money to look good, get the music they want, and get the lifestyle they want. They usually buy the expensive things to achieve all these. Sub-categories of aspirant mainstream are 'Trendies' and 'Rahs'.
Mainstream- Mainstream are the types of kids that just follow what everyone else does but this is usually those at a younger age until they get older and start having personal opinions etc. You'd be classified as mainstream if you like chart music, TV and like to drink a bit. The sub-categories of mainstream are; Ravers, Townies, Chavs, Boy racers, Sport Junkies, Street rats, and Casuals.
Urban-"Urban music is the most pervasive and influential genre in popular music, topping the charts around the world and sound-tracking the lives of many different Tribes. Members of the Urban segment are therefore very close to one of the biggest cultural signifiers in the youth market – although in planning terms, genuine Urban segment members make up a small slice of the market."
Alternative-"Possessing an alternative taste in music and fashion no longer automatically denotes outsider status. Instead, this segment makes up a significant slice of the youth market, with the internet helping to smash the barriers to the Alternative lifestyle. An enthusiasm for indie fashion and band culture is now almost obligatory in the development of middle class teens."
Leading Edge- "Leading Edge tribes are the smallest segment in the youth market. However, they drive taste across virtually all other sectors, impacting on the listening habits and fashions of everyone from rural teenage Emos to the stars of US hip hop. These tribes stand at the gateway of popular culture, and are the main influence over other Tribes like the Young Alts. However, all of these Leading Edge Tribes are hard to manipulate."


Target audience
The target audience for my magazine is the urban category. Within the urban category it's mostly going to be  the young males aged 15-25 who have an interest in hip-hop/rap because my magazine focuses on the well known artists as well as the upcoming and new artists. There are a lot of new upcoming and new artists as many youths are trying to get away from the streets by making music so this would encourage those who makes music or have interest in new artists to buy and read my magazine.

Front cover plan

I chose to use this layout for my front cover plan because it is something that would appeal to the target audience who are the urban social group.