Magazine Alterations

From my original front cover design, I have altered a few things in the layout to make it work and look more appealing. I have mainly changed things at the bottom of the front cover, and swapped things around from the contents page onto the front cover.

Flatplan

Magazine progress

Here you can see the my first session at making my front cover, I decided to change a few things from the layout. The colour scheme has stayed from my original plans.

Here you can see my final session from editing my front cover, I improvised by adding a circle shape just right of the mast head to fill in the space. The only thing left for me to do is to add my main image to complete this front cover.

Here is the first draft of my front cover.

Here is my Final front cover along side the contents page.

Here is my final product, I here show my double page spread.

Final Article

Article for Print Products

In this week’s special edition of Skate, we have an up and coming band from the town of Newton Aycliffe. We are interviewing the band ‘No Fun’ they formed in the year 1995, due to the break up of the major successful band ‘Grasshoppers’ this tribute band formed. Aiming their music around popular artists such as:

·      The Sex Pistols

·      The Clash

·      The Damned

·      Stiff Little Fingers

·      The Buzzcocks

·      The Ramones

Grasshoppers were a band formed in 1986, going on for 9 solid years. They managed to gain a record deal, due to their popular success with four years of local gigs, they were eventually noticed. They managed to produce a total amount of 3 CD’s and two singles, eventually they declined in popularity and decided to break-up. Now ‘No Fun’ is increasing in popularity year in year out, with their venue sizes increasing over time we wondered if they were going to start and produce their own material again. With only half of the former band remaining (Lead guitarist and Lead Vocals) No Fun went on to recruiting new members, now 17 years later we’re speaking to the Lead Guitarist from the band David Hodgson. We asked him a series of questions to gather some more information about the band.

Q) Do you think over the coming years your band will begin to make its own material?

A) We are certainly thinking about it, after my past experience with the Grasshoppers, I know what it is like to be involved in that sort of band. I would like it to happen because it is a great experience for everyone.

Q) Was there any particular reason for your former bands break-up?

A) I think the main reason was certain band member were beginning to get bored, some of the members had been in bands for around 20 years before I even joined, so in time they did get bored of the concept.

Q) If you do begin to make your own material, would you consider going back to a tribute band at the end of your career?

A) I think I would yes, just because it feels like a huge break doing this. Playing the songs I grew up listening to and the ones I enjoy playing the most.

Q) Would you say it is better to have a tribute band than one, which produces its own music?

A) In some aspects yes, due to the fact that you draw audiences in who know what they are going to listen too. With cover bands you could say that you have a more secure knowledge that you will get a certain number of people who will show up.

Progress Update

6 Weeks till Easter
4 weeks of this will be spent on construction


Monday 5th March --> Rough cuts of final product.
Monday 19th --> Friday 30th March - Working on 7 evaluation questions.
Monday 16th April - Completed Portfolio hand-in


Write action plan for how you intend to meet dead lines
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I intend to organise TWO set dates with people in order to get my photographs taken.
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Within the next two weeks I will have to complete: Page Layout, Write my Article, Take My photographs.

Print - Planning my Article

Planning my article

For my article I am going to be doing a mixture of two introductions, I will be mixing together the description type introduction and the interview introduction.

I will set up my description section by just going through the basis of the band, where and how it started etc. Then I will lead onto an interview going into these things in a lot more detail.

Primary Audience Research

I conducted some primary audience research in order to:
Find out what appeals to my Target Audience
To discover any flaws or potential improvements that could be made
To identify and gaps in the target audience and make stylistic changes to my product in order to increase profit.

Videos of suggested improvements.

My questions asked:

1) What is the first thing that draws your attention?

2) What would you change about the layout?

3) Is the font of the mast head to your liking?

4) What do you like about this Front Cover

5) Is it apparent what genre of music is presented?

6) What does this magazine do well?

Answers:

1) The questions have drawn answers such as, the picture is big, the eye contact draws your attention to the main picture straight away. Also, the mast head was also a popular choice for the thing that drew your attention. 

2) From all of the people that answered my questions, they have said that they would not change the layout of any of the front covers, due to the fact that is differs from all of the other magazine covers.

3) With all of the replies from this question it is quite apparant that the people liked the mast head in this front cover, they said it stands out brilliantly and links with the main image very well.
4)With all of the replies from this question it is quite apparant that the people who answered did find the front cover to their liking, they especially liked the kerrang front cover with the band A Day To Remember on the front, the fact that the picture is reaching out to you and overlapping the title of the magazine appealed to everyone.
5) Three people said that the genre was apparent, however one person did say that they though it was a punk genre for the kerrang front cover. It was in fact a heavy metal genre with the band A Day to Remember on the cover. So the three people who did say that it is a heavy metal genre.

Research into similar products

Research into similar products on Prezi

Image analysis and proposition

 Here we have a picture of Metallica, the first thing that has drawn my attention is the eye line of all of the band members. We can see that the lead singer is on the right, his eye line is in the top third, although the rule of seeing everyone left to right, he  is also placed closest to the camera. Everyone is the picture is looking in the distance, wearing sunglasses so it gives a sort of mystery to whether or not we can see if they are looking at us. Meanwhile everyone else is in the middle of the screen, so it looks like they were positioned for the most important member of the band closest to the screen.

Jimi Hendrix - Here we can see his eye line is in the top third, however he is smiling. So he gives off the impression that he is not trying to come off as powerful in this photo. Also, he is not central in the frame, his body is not even facing the camera. He is merely enjoying his guitar as we can see from his body language and facial expressions.