Screen grabs of my front cover

This is the finished product of my front cover for my music magazine. This includes all the coverlines, masthead, central image and the other codes and coventions of a music magazine previously stated. I feel this is a well designed front cover and would attract my target audience.



This shot shows the addition of a bar code issue date and price, it also shows an exclusive headline. This is a generic feature which is required for the product to be distributed, it is also located in a corner which means it is not distracting the audience eyes.



This next grab shows the short explanation of each story. I have used photoshop text boxs which allowed me to have a varied choice of fonts to do my coverlines. This is a technique which is used by NME.



This screen shot includes the exclusive storys which will advertise and try to catch the audiences attention. These are the coverlines which will appeal to my audience and are required to be interesting and about bands which the audience will recognise.



This includes my tag line for my music magazine which is love indie, love rythm which relates to the music genre i was aiming for. They were produced using effects on adobe photoshop. In this case it was the drop shadow effect.



This screen grab shows the main image for my music magazine. This main image uses a direct mode of address which is to a genreic feature of a music magazine as it draws the audiences eye to the magazine.



This is the beginning of my front cover design which includes my mast head and the background which my front cover will be developed on. This mast head has been designed and based on NME's mast head. This means my audience would be attracted to it because they would recognise the similarity. The mast head used to photoshop effects which were two layers of strokes which meant it had a black and white around the body of the text.

The development of my double page spread

4th and final Draft



3rd Draft




2nd Draft



1st Draft




The most significant change to my double page spread is that the article headline font has changed significantly, my first draft i used edwardian script for the first letter of each word on my title. I then studied my style model and noticed that this type of font is not suited to my music genre. Another change i made is the drop cap to open my article on my first draft i used an enlarged capital which would not conform with the codes and conventions of my music magazine.

By my thrid draft i chose to lower the size of my title and move my stand first below the title and bleeding on to the second page. Included within my stand first is the by line which is a generic feature of a music magazine and identifys who the writer is and who produced images. I also moved my drop quoute to the centre of my article so that the layout looked balanced and not disjointed.

I also included the mast head of my magazine to the bottom of the page next to the page number which does match the number on my contents page. reasoning for this is that it is a code and convention of a successful current marketing music magazine such as NME.

For my third and final draft i made the opening paragraph bold as this is a code and convention of a muic magazine, it will also catch the readers eye and draw them to the beginning of the article. I decided to use a catchy opening sentence as this is the sentence that will encourage the reader to read on.

Contrasts between first and second drafts of my contents page

3rd Draft



2nd Draft




1st Draft


As you can see i decided to keep the tite of my contents page as 'Inside this week', this is because i have identified NME's use of this and as my magazine is a weekly edition i thought it was suitable. I also chose to use a smilar font to what NME uses (Engravers MT).

I chose to use titled sections such as features, album reviews, Rhythm news, Live reviwes and Plus. I tried to make each of these segments clearly visible with a heading at the top of each section, however i chose to make these much clearer in my second draft with them being in black boxes. This colour also relates to my original colour scheme which is red white and black, also the colour of the titles also refers to my colour scheme.

I chose to place my two main article images in the centre of the contents page as thes are the artcles which are being used to seel the product and customers would be most interested in these. i also used the page numbers and added them to the corner of the images. My features column is placed on the top left of my page because that is where most readers eyes will be attracted to first. my page numbers are not in chronological order as this would not follow the codes and conventions of a marketing music magazine.

Images are placed inside the text boxes for album reviwes and rhythm news to relate to the stories within the sections so for example album reviwes i have used images of vampire weekends album and kele's album the boxer to co-inside with the articles. Another difference between my two drafts is that i have chose to include a advertisement for subscription to my magazine i chose to include this instead of an editors letter which may have been placed there because NME does not include a editors model. I also feel a subscription advertisement would fit better in that area of my contents page. I also decided to remove the Gig Guide section because it can be placed under my plus section as just one page, as it doesnt require its own secion, this is the same with R!Quiz.

I did keep the caption under my double page spread article image the same as it is a lyric from the Born Ruffians most well known single 'Hummingbird'.

As can be seen i was required to make changes to my second draft as the layout of the contents page was unsatisfactory. I decided to simplify the layout and make it easier to follow and find the contents. I did this by placing all the images in to one column and divide the contents in to two columns on the left and centre of the page. I also included a subscription box for advertisement as most of the well established music magazines use this on their contents age NME is an example of this.

Contrasts between first and second draft of front cover

2nd Draft




1st Draft



The clear change to my front page is that mast head, although it is the same fault i have chose to have 'rhythm' in capital letters this is to make it stand out and to follow codes and conventions of my chosen genre. I have also applied effects to the title, in this case strokes, i have used two layers of stroke effect this is to make it similar to that of my style model NME.

The tag lines i have used on the first draft have been repeated however they have had a brief desciption of the article to encourage the reader to want to buy the product. I have also took this idea from my style model NME. I have used the same colour scheme for my tag lines as i used for my mast head this is to make sure my magazine has a on-going theme throughout the product.

I have also change the text supporting my main tag line 'Fools Out' i chose to do this as the text on my first draft would not draw customers to the product as it was unappealing, therefore i came up with a story that may be more interesting and more appealking to customers. I chose to make it as a quotes as well to show the audience that it is an interview based article. NME have used this technique previously.

I also moved my positioning statement to the left side of my front cover beneath my mast head, this is because it looked disjointed on the right and looked out of place. I also placed my dat, issue number and price all together with the barcode, after studying my style model (NME) i noticed that this is how they place all the information, therefore i tried to follow the codes and conventions of a well recognsed and selling product already on the market.