Photoshop Edits

These are the images used in my magazine shown as before and after shots. The 'after' shots appear after vigorous editing in order to make them fit the theme and general style of my publication. I edited them using photoshop because I felt that it would allow them to possess a more sophisticated and professional feel about them, all of which would hint at the possibility of my magazine 'Vinyl' fitting in really well into the industry as a whole.

Starting Construction ( Double Page Spread)

Luckily, as I created my front cover and contents page before the double page spread, that meant that I could launch myself straight in to construction as I already had a general theme set in the back of my mind. I wanted to keep the colour palette simple again with the added attention grabbing aspect of a few areas of brighter colour (red). Saying this, I did still encounter problems and slight flaws in my mental designs. I had problems with the text because although I felt that it looked effective with varying opacity, stretching over the main image of yasmin glass, there was the practical aspect of some people therefore struggling to read the interview in places. This would obviously minimise my audience significantly to those with good eyesight, and so to avoid this issue,  started to experiment with 'wrapping' the text around the images and altering the positioning of the images..

As you will be able to see in this photo peach, I finally address the problem of the text possibly being unreadable to some people by 'wrapping' it (as I mentioned) around the main image. Also, after obtaining many opinions from potential readers and friends, I decided to effectively switch the whole orientation of my double page layout. I did this because of the fact that we read from left to right, so my proposed layout means that hopefully the audience would first rest eyes on the 3 'snapshots' of Yasmin on the left, so they learn a little bit about her personality. Next, obviously they would continue to read the interview before finally allowing their eyes to end up resting on the main, larger image of Yasmin, as I felt that, that particular image of her sums up her created personality as a whole and would possibly leave readers wanting to know more about her and her music, creating mystery surrounding her. 

Construction Of Contents Page

My contents page was also hard to select a theme for it to represent. My creation techniques were short but drastic and soon reflected ideas from my preliminary task with the added feelings of a slightly muted colour palette and simple images. I started off the design process by looking into yet another futuristic code and convention as featured by music magazines such as 'Q'. At first, I wanted my contents page to be so simple and clear for the readers and act as a practicality aspect to guide my audience through my magazine effortlessly. However, when I started to look back at my research of real life contents pages, I realised that a contents page can convey a lot about a magazine because it sums up everything that is featured in that particular edition. So, a simplistic theme may be effective, but if it's so simplistic that it's verging on becoming boring, then it will not entice readers in the slightest. So, I developed my idea drastically in one huge step..

I suddenly had so much inspiration from looking over the detailed research I did into the layout of contents pages for my planning. So, I combined the inspiration with ideas stemming from the 'scrapbook style' that I've mentioned before, until I reached my final product. I decided to include a section called 'Note from the editor' as this is an old technique put in place by most magazines in order  to make the audience feel so involved and personally directed by the words of the editor, as if He/She was talking to each reader individually. This technique draws the audience in and totally engages them in the articles etc mentioned on your contents page.

Construction Of Cover Page

This video demonstrates the very first stages of the construction of my front cover. It shows how I started off with a completely different modernised and slightly futuristic theme. I soon realised that this theme was not going to work for my particular style of genre that I was aiming for and this lead me to develop my ideas further using different codes and conventions..

I then experimented with the idea of matching the skin tone of my cover star Yasmin to the colour palette and general theme of the magazine. I did this because I researched into special editions of NME when they completely adapt and evolve their style, including their colour scheme for a 'one-off' edition in order to honour the featured artist. An example of this is when I looked at the special edition which featured John Lennon. However, once I could visually picture the warm toned colours all together on one cover, I felt that it sent out too much of an almost naturalistic theme because of the various skin tones etc. I then started to experiment further with fonts (as you see at the end of this photo peach) and
colours yet again to adapt this idea into my next theme that I created..

I finally decided on a more simplistic and sophisticated colour scheme as well as using editing software to tone down the images in terms of contrast and again, colour. As you will see in the photopeach video, I found it extremely different to decide whether or not to feature additional photographs on my cover. At one point, I had two extra pictures featured alongside Yasmin's headshot. Although I felt that they really mirrored the conventions of most fashion and music magazines really well, in the end, I decided to get rid of them as they were detracting vital attention away from my cover star. I constantly kept being drawn back to the NME John Lennon inspiration and decided that I should make this edition of 'Vinyl' a supposed tribute to 'Yasmin Glass' and her musical career. I therefore kept other images out of the picture and allowed my colour scheme to compliment Yasmin's personality and music genre. I even matched some of the colours of fonts to elements such as her lips and her hair.