Edits -

I have made edits to a few posts.

Contents.
Double-page spread.
Evaluation.


The new post I have added is an old draft of my front cover which I never uploaded.

Draft for front cover

This is the first draft for my new music magazine ''Janis''.

As the drawing is not very detailed, I'm going to tell you what my thought process is.

I want the background to be colourful and floral, with everything else black and white.

I want the focus to be a picture of Janis Joplin, which I plan to posterize and tint.

For the mast-head, I would like a 60s type font.

Evaluation

Conventions of magazines are things like pictures, interviews and any other media products included in the promotion of an artist/band. Forms are if the magazine is staple/square bound, printed on glossy or dull paper and the magazine is printed portrait. My magazine ''Janis'' uses these forms in that right through the front cover, contents and double page spread have pictures on. Also, I have included two interviews from two different artists. I have developed the forms and conventions of real magazines in that my interview is structured as a comparison between an old and a new artist, giving people who enjoy someone like Janis Joplin's music into listening to a newer, but similar artist. I challenged these forms and conventions as I did not include adverts in my magazine production, though you could say that the sample CD included with the magazine is an advertisement to buy more CD's. My magazine is basically printed with black ink as the background, I am aware that this would weigh down low-quality paper, but my magazine is a once-a-month for 3 months magazine and would be printed on the same paper as magazines like Q. 

My magazine represents particular social groups)my targeted age group was anyone from the ages of 25-45 and maybe some younger people who enjoy older music) in that in it's aesthetic's it is very pleasing to look at, in some respects psychedelic. It gives people who enjoy the music of Janis Joplin lots of colours and pictures to work with and it's colours make it exciting to look at. It represents a particular social groups style in that in the pictures of Janis, she is wearing things like waistcoats and blouses with a ''hippy'' vibe.  In relation to magazines like ''Sniffing Glue'' my magazine would probably be distributed at gigs. 

A media institution is a company that owns a company, distributing many different contents like news, film, video and music for example. I think that. When I thought about the distribution of my magazine, I looked into various uk magazine distributors. I read alot into COMAG which was formed in 1977 and it clicked in my mind that in 1977 alot of people would be listening to Janis's music. I think that COMAG would be interested in distributing my magazine as it would be a good way to get some more profit.

Through the construction of my magazine, I have learnt alot about the various technology I have used. Microsoft Publisher, for example, I used and learned how to create double page spreads, completely remove the background of an image and add backgrounds to my document. I used mostly Adobe Photoshop Elements 3.0 to edit the images for my magazine. With Elements, I learnt how to use tools such as the magic lasoo, eraser tool, how to saturate a picture, how to change a pictures hue and how to save the file in the right format. I'd never used Photoshop before, so it was very new to me and I have many things I have learnt. 

Looking back at my preliminary task, and through the progression to the music magazine I feel that I have learnt alot about how to construct a magazine effectively. I have learnt how to make magazines look professional as can be done with simple programs, I have learnt how to effectively use the RGB colour changing application in Publisher, Photoshop etc. I have learnt that when thinking about the appearance of your magazine, it is better to keep it simple and keep to the same colours all the way through. This is called a ''house style'' and when I looked at examples of real music magazines I found that they all had a house style.

Above, you see the first draft for my double page spread.

As you can see, the final draft (below) is very similar. 

After playing around with colour schemes, I decided the green and black theme was the one to go for. 

This is the double-page spread for my new music magazine.

I used the same pink and green used throughout the magazine.

Pink = R, 255 G, 0 B, 255.

Green = R, 0. G, 255. B, 0.

I used the same Arial Rounded MT Bold font as to keep to the house style.

The artist Heather Moon's questions are similar to Janis's to show that they are similar artists. I wanted, for the Janis interview, for fans to feel like they're getting new information.

I used microsoft publisher to create all the pages of my music magazine.

CONTENTS

This is the draft for my contents page. As you can see, it is a very rough draft. 

If you compare this with the below final draft of my contents page, you will notice a few differences but for the most part a have kept the to my original plans.

This is the contents page for my music magazine ''Janis''
I took heavy inspiration from SHINDIG magazine to design this, this is the SHINDIG contents page I have been taking the inspiration from -

As you can see, the layout of my magazine is very similar. I was having difficulty attempting to create a contents page without the another magazine as an example and I thought this design was minimal but worked very well with the psychedelic themes of the magazine.


The colours I used, were -

R -230
G -204
B -230, for the lilac box.

R -255
G -0
B -255, for the pink box.

And the preset white and black for all of the text.



Final Draft

This is the final draft of the front cover of my new music magazine. I have made my own barcode using http://www.barcodesinc.com/generator/index.php but not much else has changed.

I have not stretched the image of Janis on this version, where as in the first draft I had. I have also rotated the masthead so that it is no longer to the side as I was told by my peers that it was difficult to read.

Picture comparison

The pictures of the two artists are very similar. The bottom is my own, the top is an image I found on google and edited. The bottom image needed posterizing, the top didn't. You can notice a clear difference in the amount of posterization between the two images. However, I think the two images work well together as Janis Joplin is an old artist and Heather Moon is new.