History of Indie Magazines

I picked Indie Magazines to analyse, even though it is a fashion magazine, I like the use of its unique issue covers as all magazines follow the traditional layout of a magazine front cover.

This magazine to your left is the basic indie magazine. The main style of a normal indie magazine is normally very simplistic in the overall appearance and set out. The masthead is usually a very bold, simple font. The title normally takes up majority of the top page of the magazine- they do this because it makes the magazine look more striking compared to other music magazine genres. It would stand out more compared to other genres because the masthead is the main words on the front page. As you can tell by the other Indie magazine below, the layout and theme of the genre is exactly the same as they both include a very bold and attracts attention to the front page as it is on top of the picture of each person. 

The location of barcode, price, issue and date are all in the same position in every issue. There is also a repeating use of one quote or one section of each issue as a little insight of what is actually in the issue of the magazine. The Indie magazines have a very different set out compared to the basic music magazines such as 'Bilboard' or 'Kerrang' where they have a lot of different articles on the front cover to show what is actually going to be included in the issue because of the photos they use or even the small section of the article that they actually include.

Deconstruction of a Billboard Magazine & Contents page

Front Page

This Billboard music magazine is set out in a minimalistic and traditional way. I like that there is a colour theme, which relates to the colour of the logo in the letter 'd' of 'Billboard'.The colour yellow signifies freshness, happiness, positivity & clarity. These all link to the photo of Bruno Mars who is the main focus of the magazine. The way that he is standing shows that he is very relaxed because his posture is not exactly upright. Also, the way that his chin is raised upwards signifies confidence as an artist. The overall colour scheme of the front page magazine works really well, the use of blue, yellow and white really compliment eachother well. The use of different types of font and sizes really make the magazine look very intereting and exactly like a magazine.

Overall, I feel even though this magazine has included detailed text, a good colour schme as well as varied text font and sizings, the magazine is missing something very important, and that is the music aspect. Even though the front cover includes Bruno Mars who is a very successful artist, many people may not know him due to not listening to his genre of music. This may cause a problem for readers/buyers as they wont know whether this magazine is for music or for fashion due to no instruments or any sort of musical aspect into this front cover.

Is there anything you want to use in your own design?

The layout due to it being set out really clearly, the use of different fonts as well as sizes. I also want to try to include the continuous use of the same colour scheme for text/shapes, this is so then my magazine wont look too busy.

Contents Page

 The set out of this Billboard magazine is rather different. The use of the photos of the singers on the right hand side have numbers in the corner. This identifies automatically that other artists feature in this magazine, not just the one on the front page. I like the use of this because it shows which page you can find the artist. They have set out the contents in a non traditional way as they have separated the less important stories to the not so important stories.The use of the colour scheme of blue for the contents page is used in every issue. I feel like this contents page looks really busy due to the large amount of text and photos all included into one page. By separating all texts and maybe adding another page, by turning it into a double paged contents page, this can allow the text and photos not to look too cramped and much more clearer.

How does this magazine convey its genre?

The use of the different pictures of artists on the contents page gives us a good feel of the sort of magazine it is as the front cover just really shows a picture of Bruno Mars. This doesn't exactly confirm from the front cover that it is a music magazine until the contents is shown with more pictures of artists.



Is there anything you want to use in your own design?

I feel as if this contents page wouldn't work with the ideas that I have for my overall look of my magazine, due to it including a lot of different texts and sizes, there is too much information on one page. I wouldn't want this in my work because I feel like the overload of text looks too loud for a magazine.

Magazine Ideas

             

 

First Magazine Idea

Background:
  At first I used a light red background because I was trying to include the use of the school colours. I felt as if it didn't look right with the black & also white font for The Southfield Weekly. Also the use of the bold red background seemed a bit loud for a magazine front cover & not very eye catching.
  So after using different transparencies with the red background, I finally decided just to leave it plain white as it is very pure & clinical. it also makes the photos stand out more which is one of the main priorities of a school magazine, to show that students come first & are a main aspect of the school.
Pictures:
Reasons why I used a variety of photos on the front of the magazine is so then the readers looking at the cover can see what will be included in the articles inside this issue.
  The use of 3 different photos at the bottom, in the circles were included because these were all events that took place at Southfield. But none of these pictures were took by me, except from the top main photo. This was a main priority of mine to include previous events to make the magazine seem more recent & interesting.
Texts:
  Included in this issue is a short amount of text, including the number of issue, date & headline. This is to carry on the typical magazine layout by including these. I based my magazine on the style of Indie Magazine which has a very basic layout of a bold picture which takes up majority of the front cover with a simple headline & a small variety of text such as 'Welcome Class of 2016' which was a great way of inviting the new students to the school and 'Challenge:Commitment:Choice' which is the 3 trademark words that Southfield School uses on their website & also their newsletters.
  

Pop V Rock/Hip-Hop Rebillion

The expectations of Pop V Rock/Hip-Hop Rebellion

              

Music Genre Mindmap

Analysing School Magazines

The Four F's of Magazine Design

 

 

1.) Format:

 

-They are the design choices that are repeated in every issue. These are used to define the magazines overall look and feel. Included are a logo, cover line, size of the magazine, department headers and other things that repeat in every issue.

 

 

2.) Formula:

 

-It is the editorial content (eg: what is included in the magazine). This includes the type of articles, their length, departments in the back and front of the book (The same sections used in every issue of the magazine) all make the formula.

 

 

3.) Frame:

 

-The frame is the standard size for outer pages, margins and also gutters. Majority of magazines use the same sort of margin width throughout the content of the magazine; others sometimes vary the width, using tall top margins for features to set apart the well, for instance. The rule for using margins establishes consistency from issue to issue.

 

4.) Function:

 

- What the magazine itself is trying to achieve and the message it is trying to send.

 

 

CONSISTENCY- Same issue each time.

 

UNITY- United feel to every magazine issue.

 



Main 4 Photos for Magazine

The reasons why I used these 4 photographs was because I wanted to show a variety of staged & also natural photos. This  means that when it comes to actually designing my magazine, I can use 2 different sorts of photos. I took the photos portrait as they are the right height & width for a magazine cover, this is because landscape ways wouldn't fit the template of the magazine layout.

Magazine Terminology

 

Kicker- a great help to headline writers.

Hammer-

Deck- is a visual aid or collection of slides

Byline-  is the line, usually below the heading, that gives the author's name

Pull quote- Text of article used as a sub-heading.

Hard return-

Kerning- the process of adjusting the spacing

Text Wrapping-

Moire patterns- Object photographed contains repetitive pattern

Stroke weight-Thickness of a line

Bleed & Slug- areas that are discarded when document is trimmed to find page size

Recto & Verso- First page which is odd number (recto) and odd (verso).

Task:

Preliminary exercise: Using DTP and an image manipulation program, produce the front page of a new school/college magazine, featuring a photograph of a student in medium close-up plus some appropriately laid-out text and a masthead. Additionally candidates must produce a DTP mock-up of the layout of the contents page to demonstrate their grasp of the program.

Main task: The front page, contents and double page spread of a new music magazine (if done as a group task, each member of the group to produce an individual edition of the magazine, following the same house style.) Maximum four members to a group.

All images and text used must be original, produced by the candidate(s), minimum of four images per candidate.