Sketches For My Music Magazine

Here are my plans for my front cover, contents page and double page spread. At the moment there are rather basic and have no annotations on them, so I will explain my ideas in this post.

I have created a brief sketch of what I would want my front cover to look like. It's not a definite plan and my ideas my change in the process, depending on what photos I take, however, this is the idea that I would like to achieve at the end of this main task. I will use this as a base for all of my ideas and when making my magazine cover, I shall refer to this as this will make it easier to experiment with different designs. At the moment, I am think of having my mast head at the top and maybe slightly to the left, depending on which position my model is on my chosen photo for my publication. I'll be using a sans serif font for my title, and try and find something that would appeal more to girls and fit in with my nature theme. I think for the rest of my sell lines they will be in sans serif font, however, I may want to include a serif font, to make it stand out from the rest of my other fonts I have used. I'm not entirely sure on how many sell lines, I want to include on my front cover yet, however, I think I am heading towards a more minimal design so probably about 3 or 4. Ideally, I am hoping to have a mid shot for my front cover photo, however, I am undecided whether my model will be positioned to the side of the shot or positioned in the middle. I decided I am going to include a buzz word, to promote a free promotional gift as this is one of the main conventions that you will find on a  music magazine. I will also include the usually conventions of a bar code, issue date and price somewhere on the cover.

Following on from the front cover, I did a rough sketch of my contents page as well. Currently, I am thinking of having a guitar leaning against a tree, so the image doesn't take the audience attention away from the writing on the page. I will ensure I follow a house style by keeping the font of the mast head the same as the contents page. I'm keen on the idea of including an editorial on my contents page, as I believe it brings a more personal touch to the magazine. Therefore, with this in mind, I think I will choose a handwriting style font for the editorial and will add the text, onto handwritten lined paper. I am also thinking of adding a few thumbnails onto my front cover, as the specification asks for at least 4 original photos, a few pictures from my photo shoot will make sure I meet that specification. Also, I will try and include the same colour scheme from my front cover in my contents page. The page numbers for me are one of the main important parts of a contents page (besides the actual content!) as with these it is easier for the reader to navigate their way round the magazine. Therefore, I shall make sure they stand out by having them in a different font and in a larger font size.

For my double page spread I am thinking of having my article on one side and a large picture on the other. However, I'm not entirely sure whether to have the picture across both of the pages, it depends on what sort of picture I use really. But for this moment in time I'm going to stick with having the text on one side and the main image on the other and just experiment with the idea later on, when I start creating my drafts. I would like to have my artists name on the top left hand corner of the double page page and have an pull out quote to act as a teaser, grabbing the attention of the reader. As, the rest of my magazine will have a minimal design to it, I think I should stick to that convention with the amount of columns I used, so I aim to have about 3. This is because 3 columns is a typical convention of a music magazine, but it all depends on how big my article is and how much room I have on the double page spread. I am thinking of having the picture of my model either singing, or playing the guitar. I would ideally like my model to be busking, however, as I think you need a licence for that, I may have to work around this idea. Although I have ideas for all three purposes, my plans may change during the production of my drafts.