Question 5

How did you attract/address your audience?

Professional MagazinesFront Covers

My MagazineFront Cover

Similarities:•They all share the same colour scheme – red, white and black (mainly).•All of the logos are situated in the top left hand corner of the page.•Each have a masthead at the very top of the page, highlighting some key features within the magazine.•In the top right hand corner of the front covers, there is a large captioned box saying a special feature within the magazine – concerts.•The mentioned articles all run down either side of the front cover, Q magazine and my magazine for example have the majority of article previews along the right hand side of the page, NME is on the right.•They all feature a male artist as the front cover image.•The names of the artists on the front cover have been made bold to stand out on the page.•The image of Eminem is of him staring out into the distance, likewise so is my front cover image.

Differences:•The professional magazine images have been edited onto a single coloured background, whereas my background to the image is of a certain place.•Only my magazine front cover appears to reference the popular site Twitter as a reference for readers to use.•The professional magazines’ logos both consist of letters that, perhaps, stand for something whereas my logo is not an abbreviation and is instead an actual word.

Professional MagazinesContents Page

My MagazineContents Page

Similarities:•Each of the contents page’s has the colour scheme red, white and black.•More than one image has been used on the page, at least one is larger than the other.•Each image is numbered accordingly to the page number that the article features on.•Other features that have been mentioned through the magazine are presented in a single column either down the right side of the page or the left.

Differences:•My the background colour of my contents page is black whereas the professional contents pages have a white background.•The professional contents pages have positioned the word “contents” in the top, left hand corner of the page in a bold yet relatively small font, dissimilarly the positioning of my “contents” takes up the width of the page and is white separated and noticeable.•The writing on the pages of the professional contents page is in black whereas mine appears in white as a contrast against the black background.•My largest image on the page is of a female and in the professional pages, they mainly feature males as the larger images.

Professional MagazinesDouble Page Spread

My MagazineDouble Page Spread

Similarities:•An image of an artist/band features and takes up the space of a whole page. Although in the second professional magazine above, the image spreads across one page and a fraction of the second.•The colour scheme red, white and black is present throughout the double page spreads.•Columns have been used to present the articles.•Main quotes from the articles have been selected and positioned in quote boxes. The second professional example and my article both include a large circle to place the quote in.•The images are all mid-shots so we get to see the vast majority of the body and the images of the artists have been positioned in the centre of the frame.

Differences:•The professional magazines’ images all have a plain background colour included whereas my image has a setting and scenery to make the image look more appealing and interesting.•The professional magazines have included large, over-sized letters to begin the article and at the beginning of another paragraph.•The background colour of my article page is black and the professional pages are white.•The writing in the professional magazines is all in presented in black apart from the large letters and mine are colour co-ordinated to show who is speaking throughout the interview.

My Front CoverDevelopment and Changes

By using the website “odosketch” I was able to sketch out my initial ideas of how I wanted my magazine to look and be presented and also what would feature.

After sketching my ideas out, I decided to being laying out, in more detail, where things would be positioned and what certain article or image would be featured.

I then continued by creating a draft of my front cover. By doing this I was able to get a clear image of how my magazine would look like once I started to work on it.

My Front CoverDevelopment and Changes

After I had taken and edited my pictures, I moved on to actually creating an almost final draft of my front cover. I decided though to make some changes, for example, I decided that I did not want to have a mid-close up shot of my artist and instead I would have a full length body shot to make my front cover look more striking and eye-catching.

After receiving some audience feedback, I made a few adjustments to my final front cover. It was mentioned that there was too much writing on the page, so I cut down the amount of writing so that the page looked less busy and more appealing. Also, I thought that the top right corner of the page looked quite blank so I decided to add another feature article. I also changed the margining along the sides. I decided that I did not think the black sides had any relevance to the magazine and just looked as though it was distorting my image so I removed them. Also I added a black background for my masthead, as before it was quite hard to read as it is written in white writing.

My Contents PageDevelopment and Changes

By using the website “odosketch” I was able to sketch out my initial ideas of how I wanted my magazine to look and be presented and also what would feature.

After sketching my ideas out, I decided to being laying out, in more detail, where things would be positioned and what certain article or image would be featured.

I then continued by creating a draft of my contents page. By doing this I was able to get a clear image of how my magazine would look like once I started to work on it.

My Contents PageDevelopment and Changes

After I had taken and edited my pictures, I moved on to actually creating an almost final draft of my contents page. I kept all of my initial ideas the same as my audience feedback was positive about it.

I thought that my previous contents page looked too busy with the battling black and white background, so I decided to make it more simple and stick to one colour, black. Because I did this, I had to change some of the colour of my text and dialogue boxes so that the writing was clear.

My Double Page SpreadDevelopment and Changes

By using the website “odosketch” I was able to sketch out my initial ideas of how I wanted my magazine to look and be presented and also what would feature.

After sketching my ideas out, I decided to being laying out, in more detail, where things would be positioned and what certain article or image would be featured.

I then continued by creating a draft of my double page spread. By doing this I was able to get a clear image of how my magazine would look like once I started to work on it.

My Double Page SpreadDevelopment and Changes

After I had taken and edited my pictures, I moved on to actually creating an almost final draft of my double page spread. I changed a couple of things from my draft as I decided not to include a large sized letter at the beginning of the article as I wanted to break out of the cycle of the stereotypical magazine. I also decided not to include another image of my artist in the article itself as it would have looked too busy on the page.

I altered a couple of things from my previous draft such as I decided to make the background black as before, the white made the page look to plain and dull and because of this I changed the colour of the quote circles so that the balance and contrast looked appropraite.