Unit 51 Page Layout and Design

Production Commentary

Slide 1: Design ProgrammesI designed my magazine cover in photo shop using various tools such as stretching the image and adjusting it to fit the page, adjusting the brightness and contrast and using the dodge tool. I also used DaFont to find a font style which I wanted to use for the name of the magazine. I also used fonts already installed in photo shop for other bits of writing I have used on the front cover, as well as changing some of the colours of it and size to make elements stand out and become more eye-catching. I put my article onto a double page spread template in photo shop.

When I first wrote my article, I did it on microsoft word. Then another person edited my article and put notes on there for things I needed to change such as spelling or grammar mistakes, alternatives for words or ideas for headlines etc. Once that had been returned back to me, I used microsoft word again to edit my final article and then put it on my blog and finally on the double page spread into photo shop. I also put the edited copy onto my blog as evidence.

Slide 2: FORMATSI have created a magazine front cover and article for this project. I have looked at magazines such as NME and Q as well as Vogue and a variety of other magazines for layout ideas and to just see how they do everything to get ideas for my magazine. As I wanted to do a sports magazine, I looked a FourFourTwo magazine, ManC magazine which is a magazine done by Manchester City FC and Match magazine. I liked the idea of having bold fonts going across the page like the first three images below do. Having the cover star in the centre of the photo I much preferred compared to having their whole face on the page, inspiration for this was ManC magazine and Q magazine.

Slide 3: Conventions & Visual LanguageI have used bold fonts and the font that is the masthead of the magazine looks like a sports programme style, therefore associating it with a sports magazine and making it look more sports-like.I have used two different colours on the front cover of my magazine, red and blue. In sports, a lot of teams tend to be in these colours and are now associated as rival colours and so I thought this would be a good idea to use them. Also, as my target audience is typically males, red and blue are often associated with that gender. I have also kept the other colours quite basic (black, white and grey) so that the red and blue stands out more against them colours.In the double page spread, as my background is mostly green, I have had to use brighter colours to stand out against the background. I liked the idea of using a yellow colour to use on the words ‘golden’ as that is a similar colour, but as it might look too light on the green background, I made a black box and put the writing on top of that. I still stuck with the blue coloured writing on my double page spread as that is stereotypically a male associated colour and also, as the article is about a player who plays for Manchester City and they are known to be in light blue kits, so the use of this colour will also associate towards that.

We first start to read from the primary optical area. We see part of the heading in the magazine which has been made into a bold style to make it more eye-catching to the audience. We also see a cover line which says what is also included in the magazine, in this case it is a competition which will get the audiences attention.

Our eyes are usually drawn to this area last. It’s mostly a blank area with a bit of writing into it, but nothing that draws us to that particular area. This is known as the weak fallow area.

This is the strong fallow area and here we can see the remainder of the heading which is in the same bold style and therefore continues to draw attention. We can also see another cover line which shows what else is featured in the magazine and will catch the audiences attention .

The axis of orientation draws our attention to the centre of the image where the cover star is: Sergio Aguero. As he is the main thing on the front of the magazine it is important that he catches peoples attention. There is also another cover line.

Here in the terminal area, we can see the price of the magazine, the issue number and the date it was released. You also have the barcode.

Masthead

Barcode

Cover linesCover lines

Kicker

Lead article

Headline

Pull quote

GuttersBody text

SubheadingKicker

Drop cap

Slide 4: AudienceI would say the age of the target audience would be from the ages of 15-early 20’s, (15-25).Typically, as it is a sports magazine, it would be aimed at boys, but by adding a female to the magazine (Jessica Ennis), hopefully this would also influence girls to read the magazine. Girls are also interested in many sports just like boys are but mostly the target audience gender wise is boys.I think the social status for people that would read this magazine is those in the E class, D class and C2 class.I think the magazine meets the needs of the target audience because there are a variety of sports within the magazine and not narrowed down to just one or revolved around one particular sport, therefore it would be aimed at everyone because not everyone likes the same sport or one sport so it is important to appeal to everyone and so I included other sports as well as football, such as tennis, horse riding and athletics.I think my magazine meets the needs of the target audience for this magazine because I have included more than one type of sport so it would appeal to more than one audience which is important as not everyone will like one sport so you need to include other features in the magazine that will appeal to other audiences of different sports. I have also used red and blue colouring which is associated with males and that is the main target audience of this magazine.

Tennis Athletics Horse riding