Basically finished

Well, I've basically finished my media coursework. I'll spend the next few days updating my blog on all the technical stuff to do with the magazine, the photoshop techniques and everything like that.

The only thing I'm a little worried about now, besides the evaluation, presentation and the rest of the blog, is the fact that I'm supposed to save my magazine in JPEG format. I mean, that's almost the lowest quality file you can pick when saving an image, and the quality of my magazine is going to suffer because of that. I mean, if we were asked to save them in BMP format or something then I'd be fine, but because we're printing JPEGs, they're not really going to represent the standard of work that we've all been doing.

Yeah, it's a little bit annoying.

But anyway, the main bit's out of the way. Just need to finish up on the blog and everything and I'm done.

Shouldn't be too hard...

p.s Here's the completed pages. In JPEG form *shudders*

Front Cover

Looking back at the design I made for this back in February / March, there's been a lot that's changed. The only thing from the original design that made it to the final cover was the block capital title. What was originally going to be posters of five bands has changed to just the names of three, and the original idea of having a border and basing it on the same basic colour schemes of Kerrang! and NME has changed completely. Throughout the magazine, instead of the original Red / Black / White colour scheme, I've changed it to different shades of blue, white, silvers and a bit of pink here and there. It gives it a more cooled, chilled out and relaxed mood, and contrasts well with the idea of a battle and the image of the band member on the front pointing to the reader in a "Britain wants YOU" pose, definitely reminding observers of the WW2 propaganda campaigns in Britain and in the US.

The figure pasted on the relatively blank background means that they stand out from the rest of what is a relatively blank and uninteresting cover, but the pose of the lone figure means that casual observers will hopefully be intruiged by the mysterious figure that they probably have never seen before and will be more likely to either take an interest or eventually end up buying the magazine.

If this doesn't work, there's also the promise of free music for anyone who buys the magazine. People like free music, but it would probably only affect people who are unsure whether or not they want to buy the magazine in the first place. Someone isn't going to buy a magazine for free music, as it would kind of defeat the point of free music.

Contents Page

The contents page has the same style and colours of the front cover - cool blues, the silver-to-white transitional background, and the simple, sans serif text with straight lines and a clear, clean style. This makes it stand out from most other music magazines, as it involves music that is usually associated with insane colours, extraordinary and eye-catching fonts, and images that pack a punch and usually include allusions to anarchy and rebellion. However, the content of the text and some of the words used makes it clear that most people's first impressions about the magazine would probably be wrong.

I didn't include a page number on the contents page because it would most likely be on the opposite side of the cover, or at least the first actual page in it, so I thought it wouldn't actually need a page number.

Feature Spread

The Feature Spread is my favourite part of my magazine. It follows a slightly brighter colour scheme from the other two pages, as it is not one of the "mandatory" or "official" pages - it's an article, which makes it individual and original, completely different from anything else in any other issue of the magazine, whereas the front cover and the contents page would be something that appears in every other issue ever. You could read a magazine without reading about three bands having a battle for a record deal, but you wouldn't expect to find a magazine without a front cover or a contents page. There hasn't been an "official" magazine without either of those two to my knowledge, but if there are, then they're probably not that important and / or useful or widely read.

With the images on this page, while I'm happy with the images on the far left and the far right, the ones just right of the centre could probably do with a little work. I should probably have left more room to move them around, but instead I've had to bunch them up together in a small group to make sure that they fit and don't intrude on the other band's space. I also had to bunch them up to avoid them spilling over the centre line and showing up on the other page, which probably wouldn't look too good.

Yeah, that was a pretty long PS.