Music Magazine: Drawn Drafts

This is my initial ideas for the front cover of my Rock/Indie music magazine.

I based my splash on colour, size, font and spacing of letters from this issue of 'Q' as it is the magazine brand I am basing my cover page on. This is because 'Q's genre is similar to mine, and so, I thought it wise to adopt techniques it conveys, to present a magazine that would appeal to my target audience.

I also modeled my header bar on this issue of 'Q' as I felt it was not over-detailed and refreshing in it's simplicity. In addition to the grid structure, I decided to only display a header bar, opposed to displaying both a header bar and a footer line, based on research of 'Q's layout. This is evident in the image below.

The masthead colour and layout is also modeled on 'Q'. I replicated this in a similar way as it stands out from the rest of the text on the cover page (the unique colour combination of white on red). However I added outlining for emphasis.

This is my contents page for my music magazine, that I have designed.

I decided to model my contents page of a genuine magazine of a similar genre to mine (rock/indie) to create a music magazine that would be perceived as realistic and professional. This is why I chose Q magazine. The layout and style techniques were easy to use to mold my own idea of a music magazine contents page.

I used all of my cover page sell lines within the features of my draft, as having the pages linking would present the magazine I create as authentic.

Following this, I kept the colour scheme the same as my cover page, and gave the largest picture frame to the model of my splash, as this is what I intend to focus my article on. This portrays this feature of my magazine as important.

I kept my page numbers below 50, which is what my target audience research suggested, as well as my frequency of publishing 'the best tracks this week'. This presents how I have taken my research into account and actively applied my magazine in such a way that would appeal to my target audience. This is imperative in the success of a magazine, as being attractive for the audience will generate interest, that will then lead to sales which will produce profit for the brand, publisher, and any symbiotic relationships the magazine shares with advertisements within the magazine. Plus the more sales, the higher advertisers and artists will be willing to pay to be positively displayed within the magazine, further increasing profit.

On the subject on advertisers, the page numbers I displayed suggest the amount of pages used for that feature. However, for some of the amounts of 3 pages, this will entail a page used for an advertisement. Although, advertisements are not specified within the contents page as research shows that this is not what other magazines tend to present.

With the models I have used, I decided that it would be representative of what my target audience would individually prefer, if I presented both genders. This way, I can portray a female, which my target audience may find desirably appealing, as well as the male artists that will relate to their gender. This does not single out a gender, and will hopefully cover all preferences of this genre. Also, it presents the brand as high in knowledge of all aspects of it's genre.

I chose to use different positions for the models to pose in, as this portrays the magazine as professional and different in the sense that it does not always stick to the repetitive and sometimes boring details. Instead, it conveys it's self as unique, and, for my target audience who may be at that stage in their lives where they are considering what they was to do with their future, it represents the individuality they might be craving to express. Therefore, by being a creative outlet, the target audience may find comfort in being consumer of the magazine, which will generate profit for the brand. As well as this, another reason for choosing a more seductive pose for the female artist in my contents page, is that it plays to attracting the male audience that the magazine targets, which could also generate more sales, and by extension, profit.

This is my drawn draft of the article I aim to produce for my music magazine.

I already had a rough idea of how I wanted my article to be presented like. However, I researched various other professional magazines to assist is perfecting my idea to allow it to be at a stage that would be considered a realistic article for a magazine.
I used layout suggestions from:

I used style and colour scheme suggestions from:

I choose to call the interview 'THE AMPLIFIED INTERVIEW' to reinforce who gave the the reader the article.

Like Q magazine, I ended my article with my brand name, and to further reinforce the origin of the content. This is evident in the Adam Ant article from Q magazine, shown above.

I used the quotation 'out of CONTROL' as my title because I felt that because this was probably what brought the audience to the article in the magazine, and so I wanted to make it clear that this was it's content.

In keeping with the layout of other articles, I made certain that I included details such as credits like words and portrait, drop caps, pull quotes, an image of the artist, the colour scheme of the magazine, the date of the issue, conventional language 'exclusively', page numbers that match the contents page (pages 21 and 22) and subscription and website details to appeal to the technophiles and to portray that this brand has multi-media platforms. This all presents the magazine as professional and realistic.