PRODUCTION LOGMARCUS THOMAS

MastheadI intended to make my masthead catchy by calling it the “PAR” which is simply “RAP” backwards. This would play with the audience’s mind as they would have to figure out that the word “PAR” is the word “RAP” in reverse and they would feel that the magazine is interesting for this reason. The masthead is also design in the colour red because due to research I found out that the colour was used effectively to create an eye-catching approach towards the magazine. The main image would be sitting on the masthead to show that this is a niche magazine so no one really identify the corporate identity of the magazine unless they know it already. The black stroke makes the mast head look more attractive as it makes the red colour come to life by slightly coming off the page to give a bold touch to the masthead. When researching front cover pages of hip-hop magazines, I found out that the font was quite consistent and a bold, serious approach to it. The only font which I was satisfying me was “impact” due to the complexity and non-ornamental design. The black stroke makes the masthead look a lot like the masthead of “The Source” which inspired me in using red and black. I rotated the “THE” of the masthead 90oc anti-clockwise just to make it look quite stylish. Because I used InDesign to construct my front cover, I was able to use the… to know if I’m going of the page when design my masthead so I had to rotate the “THE” to conserve space. I also made the price of the magazine and website address sit on the masthead because it would be visible to the reader when looking at the masthead. Some of the main image sits on the masthead to show more of the artist to attract the audience in seeing their favourite artistes entirely.

Skyline

The skyline is used to give the audience a hint as to what the magazine is about. My skyline was written in the same font as my masthead to give the page a degree of consistency which would attract my target audience. Because my target audience includes youth and adults, I see my magazine is aiming at a diverse age group. I wanted my skyline to be seen as a key selling point so I decided to place it above the masthead at the top of my page so it could be seen when the reader sees the masthead. I made the stroke quite thick with the weight being 3pt to make it stand out and come of the background which enlightens the reader due to the effect it has. The reader would believe that the stroke used on all the text are coming at them especially if it is quite thick.

Main Image• My main image was taken in a music studio and it was of the

rapper at work, rapping through a microphone and wearing headphones. This was done to show my target audience this image represent the hip-hop genre as all hip-hop artists are at this position when rapping. My target audience would attract my target audience due to the age of this rapper being in his mid-teens.

• Because my magazine is mainstream, consumers would already know my corporate identity so I was able to place my main image on top of the masthead so I could show all of the artists features which would appeal to my target audience more if they get to see the image entirely.

Cover lines, cover story• The cover line for my magazine is my main selling point with

relevance to my main image. It is written in red the same colour as the masthead because the colour used connotes danger, blood or to stop which obviously would appeal to the target audience since this is the warmest colour.

• The cover line and cover story is placed on the bottom left third to make the main image be seen clearly and to utilise space which was emphasised by making the font size be “58” and the cover story making up four lines with the font size being “23”.

• The cover story is written in white because I wanted the white to pattern with the red cover line. All the main pieces of text e.g. masthead and cover line are red to attract the audience with the rest of the text being white to show colour-coordination but with a black stroke to make it seem as still important hence the reason why I made my cover story white.

Supporting images• I came across including supporting images on my front

cover because when I researching the magazines, I realised that they all included just one image which was the main image. I decided to place the supporting image on the left with the caption underneath showing what page the story linked to the photo would be on. Yet again the caption is written in a white impact font surrounded by strokes to soften the red approach to the page and also the font size is quite small so the reader would notice that the story is important but not as important as the main image and its cover line.

Changes from my statement of intent

I made several changes to my front cover of my magazine from what I intended to make. My main

image was to either include one image of three girls or only an image of one person with only one supporting images. At the end, I decided to have a

main image with an artist recording from a microphone with one supporting image of three people. The artist in my main image is a teenager which would attract my target audience who are

aged 15-21 as they would feel this would relate to them. The background of magazine is a slight

greyish colour because I thought that it would be best using either a grey or white background. The colour white made the front cover look plain so

added grey as it could be seen as a neutral colour yet moody which relates to my genre of hip-hop

(the good, bad and the ugly). A minor change was that I was going to align my barcode to the left of

my front cover along with the cover lines, but I decided to put the barcode on the bottom right of

the front cover page of my magazine.

My intended front cover page without the grey background

My front cover page finalised with the grey background

How I used the software's• I used two image editing softwares whilst designing the front cover of my magazine. Adobe

InDesign CS3 which I used to design my magazine and Adobe Photoshop CS3 which I used to manipulate my main image. The first step I took was to manipulate my main image on Photoshop which I would then copy onto InDesign. The functions of Photoshop which helped me manipulate my images were the crop tool which I used to crop only the important bits of the main image, the airbrush tool to lighten the main image, using the selection tool to take my image of the background and I used the flip tool to from right to left to allow my supporting image to be aligned and my cover lines to be aligned on the left of the front cover page.

• I used InDesign to design my magazine to create a professional look and feel like many other popular magazines. The functions of InDesign that I used effectively was the pasteboard as it allowed me to weigh up my options if I thought an image or a piece of text was suited to the front cover page or not. I edited the text and made it stand out by using strokes and widening the strokes to make the text stand out more. The rectangle frame tool was handy in inserting my supporting images inside the box and the selection tool on InDesign was very useful as I got to handle the objects in the front cover page with ease and drag them wherever I would like to place them.

How I Used the software’s

Using the selection tool in Photoshop to take the image of the background and copy and paste it to InDesign

I used the flip tool to switch my main image from a right left so that the cover lines and the supporting images could align to the left. If I did not do this, there would be no room for the cover lines and supporting image to appear on the front cover as my main image is quite big and I want people to see the whole image as it is linking with an important article

How I used the software’s

The strokes I used to make my masthead stand out is weighed at 4pt. Without the strokes my product would of look like the masthead below which would bring no spark to the audience I am attracting as it does not stand out and come off of the background

How my masthead looked before which was quite dull and had no affection to the front cover page which the audience would not be attracted to

The pasteboard here allows me to drag text of the magazine if I do not like it and it allowed me to think If I should keep it on the page or not which I did not because there was hardly any room for the cover line to sit on.