Design Choices

Masthead

As my genre is very technology-based and uses technology from old videogame systems, I will use fonts and colour to reflect this. The colours used will be from the NES colour palette, which is very limited yet colourful. The text itself will be created using an image manipulation program such as photoshop. 

Based on the masthead on the MusicTech mag, the first letter of both words will be capitalised and the rest lower-case. The masthead will be put central and cover the top of the magazine cover, taking up 10-15% of the space on the cover.

Masthead ideas

After experimenting with masthead ideas i ended up with the following document:

Asking the target audience i found out which looked the most attractive and was easiest to read. The 4th was said to be the best laid out but the 5th the nicest looking. I used this to create a first draft of the masthead made from scratch:

I showed this to the same people to get feedback. The general feel for it was that it was not bold enough and the letters possibly too low resolution to be easy to read.

I took these criticisms into account and created a new one with a higher resolution and a black outline to make it clearer.

This is my final design. The colour palette that I used was that from the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) which makes the masthead more appropriate for the audience. Though it is subtle it is still noticeable.

Style sheet

I have not included fonts for the masthead because I plan on creating my own graphic for use as my masthead.

Pitch Feedback

Using the audience feedback, I have changed a couple of ideas to suit. The colour scheme has been narrowed down to a smaller amount of colours to make it less overpowering and more recognisable.I also now plan on making the magazine cover another music genre as the one i had chosen previously has a very small audience.

Pitch Presentation

Cover Design drafts

These are two seperate design drafts for the front cover.

This first cover layout is very basic and is based mainly off the MIXMAG that i used in my research. It is very minimal and only has a Masthead, Coverlines, a splash and a small amount of puff. a small white border has been left around the edge of the central image.

This second cover layout has much more going on,  with more puff and coverlines. The style of this cover looks much more sharp and probably suits the genre of music that my magazine covers much better than the first. The masthead on this one would not have a background but would be laid over the central image. The central image will be stretched to the edges of the magazine.

Time management update

The time plan that was previously posted stated that by the current week (week 5, 11 Nov) I should be developing the front cover of my music magazine. I have not quite reached this point and have one or two tasks to do which according to my time plan should have been posted last week. During this week I should finish these tasks and begin to design the cover of the magazine.

First draft for Cover, Contents page and Double page spread

Music magazine research: Features | MusicTech Magazine

I decided to use the MusicTech magazine as research as it focuses more on the technology used in creating music. The genre of the magazine I will be creating is Chiptune, which is very heavily reliant on the technology and equipment used. Though my magazine will not be specifically about the equipment, it will have aspects. I may need to take ideas from this magazine for photo shoot styles and fonts.