Unit 51 Page Layout and Design

Emily AldredProduction Commentary

Design ProgrammesFor my magazine, I took images using a Canon EOS 550 D with a Canon 50 Prime lens. I took photos of my model/artist Shauna Leacy who doubled as ‘Ivy Quinn’. I then transferred these images over to Adobe Photoshop where I chose my final images, one for the front cover and the other for the double page spread. Adobe Photoshop was released in 1990 and is a raster graphics editor developed and established by Adobe systems for windows and OS X. Adobe also have published a variety of other software for editing such as illustrator and after effects. Photoshop is mainly used for editing of images to either enhance colour, soften images, blur, rearrange and retouch the image. Photoshop is used in a variety of media, one of the main media being magazines such as Photoshop being used to enhance image such as landscape image or portrait images. Over the years there has been a few releases of Photoshop, in 2015 there was counted thirteen versions of Photoshop that contained major and some minor changes before the 2003 creative branding, and before Adobe, in February 2013, donated a source code of the first version of Photoshop to the computer history museum. There have been many different ways to access Photoshop, such as downloading it from online, buying the instalment and or downloading it as an application designed specially for tablets and touchscreens devices for on the go or big company's that have their editing staff moving around a lot. There is also an application designed for IOS, two different versions of this exist such as one deisgned for Ipad’s and the other for Iphone/Ipod touch. Both of these applications require IOS5 or later, but android versions can be installed on a handset with an update of 4.0 or the android tablets of 3.1 or later.

FORMATSFor my magazine, I looked towards Andy Warhol’s magazine, Interview for inspiration. I got inspiration from this magazine by some of the front cover designs, such as the colours they use and how they use them, such as the Zac Efron cover, they used yellow and pink colours together, which don’t really go but in the way they’ve used them, such as the heart shapes, they go with the black and white picture. With the Natalie Portman front cover, they’ve used a black and white image again, but used a tint of colours on her right cheek using tones of blue, pinks and oranges mixed together. This inspired me to create my front cover with coloured tones on, hence the pink/blue tones. With the Kristen Stewart front cover, there are a lot of tones and bright colours of the cold and warm pallet used. This again inspired my use of colours on the images during editing. For the double page spread, I took inspiration from Interview magazine again, but of the Spring/Summer 2011 article of a new fashion line. I liked the use of the title above the introduction, I felt it kept the writing together but kept them separate so it was easy on the eye. I also liked the use of the full page image, but during my editing, I couldn’t do a full page image because my image that I had chosen, was a landscape image and wouldn’t fit landscape, also I had to fit my text on so I couldn’t of used a full page image if I wanted to fit my introduction on as well.

Conventions & Visual LanguageThe conventions and visual language used in my magazine include the use of genre conventions. This is what you would expect to see on a magazine based off its genre, so with a music magazine, you expect to see musical articles, artists/song writers and or other items on the front cover/inside the magazine that relate to music. It’s the same with a fashion magazine, on the cover would be either a celebrity or a model, wearing something fashionable with articles around the magazine either related to fashion or relating to their target audience, which if it’s a fashion magazine, their main audience is women aged around 15+, so their articles would relate to them. On my front cover, I have the 57th Grammy Awards logo on, which means that the magazine has a link to music since they are considered the highest music awards. I also have text that is written above the logo that has a ‘featuring’ list of what other artists are included in the magazine such as Charli XCX, Clean Bandit and Gorgon City. Adjacent to this list, there is another list of what articles there will be inside the magazine such as an A-Z guide of festivals, the hottest tracks of 2015 so far and two articles relating to signers, so there is more than one article in the magazine. The main headline (model credit) doesn’t suggest anything about music but is linked the main image. The four other headlines are slightly smaller and placed underneath and are all relating to music such as winning a chance to meet a band, the best album artwork and a guide to a perfect party playlist. The masts head is the magazine title, which I named mine ICON, since many people consider their favourite artists their ‘icons’, and underneath this masthead is a small tagline of ‘music magazine’ so when people read the title, they will automatically know it is a music themed magazine. on my double page spread, I have the title at the top of the left page, followed by the image below that which is of the same artist that is featured on the front cover. Below that is the introduction I have wrote for that artist, which consists of informal language and talks about her new releases, which if people read briefly, they will know she is linked to music. Besides this text is a small EP album artwork I created so that if people scan the page, they will notice a music debut with the ‘released now’ below knowing that it is advertising a musical artist. On the right hand page is the article with a pull quote to break the text up followed by a review after it. By applying the Guttenburg Design Principle to the front cover, we start with the Primary Optical Area which is the left hand side, our eyes start here by reading the title which then takes us across the top to the strong fallow area in the top right hand side, this is because we were taught to read left to right, so we analyse text this way for it to make sense. Our eyes then go diagonal down to the bottom left, crossing over the axis of orientation which is the centre of the image which on my front cover, is my model, which makes her the main focus because she is centre focus and takes up most of the space, if we applied a 3X3 grid on top of the cover, she would overlap the lines. Also in the axis of orientation is my model credit (title) which explains who the model is. Our eyes then go to the bottom left corner, which is the weak fallow area, this is where my barcode/date/price is because this is the area that is least cared about, and usually doesn't ’t contain much information. Our eyes then move across the bottom to the bottom right corner, again because we read left to right. Across this part of my front cover, I have the cover lines (other main articles) which take us to the terminal area where our eyes stop analysing the image. With it being a double page spread, our eyes would do a page at a time rather than scanning across two pages. On the first page, the primary optical area has the headline on which is the models/artists name which stretches across to the strong fallow area. Going down through the axis of orientation, it takes us to the picture of the artist/model which is the main focus of this page as the rest is text. Down to the weak fallow area is the introduction of the artist, then across to the terminal area, which Is where the EP album art work is, which is where the introduction also ends. The same also applies to the second page of the double page spread, but this page is all text with a pull quote so the reader would read down the columns.

Conventions & Visual LanguageOn my front cover of my magazine, I used a picture of my model/artist and during Photoshop, I made slight changes to the image such as the colours, which allowed me to go off of a colour theme. I changed the image to have a slight tint of pinky purple on the left side, fading into a bluey grey colour. I then used these colours as ideal colours to base my text colour off, such as the masthead is in bold white, with a deeper purple shadow tint, with some of the featuring list being in the same colour purple, so it is noticeable over the pinky purple tint. For the box background of my lead article, I used a teal colour with a white font on top so it stood out. Then with the cover lines, I used the same colour teal as the box background, as the font colour, with the white as the box background, switching it around. Since there are four cover lines, I had them all the same colours themes so the lead article stood out more with it being the opposite way around. I also used the colour black for some fonts, as well as white. I used these two colours since they are simple and can go with any colour theme, as well as them standing out against the contrasting colours of blue/grey/pink/purple. I used this colour theme as the pinky/purple side is considered more girly, which would appeal to the female audience, and I used the bluey/grey colours which would appeal more a male audience, so it appeals to both sides, as well as the tones going well together. I used simple fonts for the masthead, lead article and cover lines as they are the largest text on the image, and therefore stand out without having to be fancy text. With the cover lines, I used a different font to make them stand out more, as well as one side of the cover lines being in lower case, making it more of a relaxed approach, and the right hand side being in capitals as they are more articles than cover lines, which makes them stand out more than the left side. I think with the text and colours all considered, my magazine would appeal more towards a female audience because the colour pink is more prominent and the articles appeal more towards a female audience such as the image of the circle with the 57 th Grammys Awards on. It suggests a female audience as well due to the model, she is female, which other females would want to know about and either get to know more about the artist. I think my magazine suggests a music genre as the text is all about music or artists and the Grammy’s logo sets it all off.

AudienceThe target audience for my magazine, I would say is mainly aimed at females, purely because I am a female myself, therefore iv’e designed it to more appeal to the female audience, as well as using female colours. I would also say that it is aimed at males as well, but not as much as females. I think the male audience would enjoy my magazine as it might appeal to them with their favorite bands/artists being in that magazine. I would say the age range is around 15-25 as this is the age range that mostly take interest in music, and therefore they would buy this magazine if their favorite artists were to appear in the magazine. With the social status of the audience, I think my magazine would appeal more towards the lower middle class/working class category of C2 and below as these are the ranges of people with skilled/semi-skilled jobs and or are students, which is the target audience. My magazine would meet the needs of the target audience by the articles, there are a wide variety of different genre artists to appeal to more people, by the lead article, who, if it were real life, would be a big star that is widely known, therefore would appeal to a bigger fan base, as well as the images, they have been edited to appeal to male and female with the stereotypical gender colours of pink/purple and bluey grey.