Drafts/Progress

Here some of my original drafts, and some images showing the progress I made towards them. These show my original ideas of the magazine, and the extent to which they changed becomes clear when you look at my final products. In this original design of my front cover, you can see minor differences in the background fog, and faded black edging. I eventually decided that it looked better without the extra fog, and with the black fade, before I decided to use a different image for my final product.

There are also some p

Photoshop images of when I was adding the Cover Lines.

Original Images

Font Ideas

For the Masthead font, I think I will use either Birth Of a Hero, Sterofildelic, or Trashco. This is because these fonts seems to be the most interesting, yet appropriate. I did think of using a more Standard font Like Vibe does, but after looking at these fonts (particularly Birth Of A Hero) I feel that these will work better for my magazine, which is aimed at a slightly younger audience than Vibe.

For sub-titles and front cover titles I think I will use CopperPlate Gothic Bold since it seems to look good when In a bigger font, but not so good when smaller - for my smaller writing I think I will use Gill Sans MT or Arial, since these are standard fonts which are very easy on the eye.

Full Analysis of Vibe Magazine Oct/Nov '10

In my opinion the magazine as a whole is a very good one, and has a great style which has given me something to work alongside when making my own magazine. You can see my Analysis of Front cover, contents page and feature articles to see what I thought of the style of those specific parts. Despite is great style and appealing looks, I think that the magazine is a little to confusing as to what things are and where they are. This is partly to do with a confusing contents page - which is split over 2 pages, with adverts in between, and doesn't seem to cover everything (although it probably does). Not only this, but the amount of adverts is the magazine is huge, especially near the start. I feel that the adverts could have been all before the contents page, or all after it, and the magazine could have much more defined sections to make it less confusing.

I think it would help if the contents pages did not have adverts in between and were next to each other, and also if the title pages for each 'section' were a little more clear. For example, for one section called "The Splurge" there is an advert for books on the left page, and then the main picture on the splurge page is a TV, which makes the page look like an advert itself. Then, when you go into this section, it is laid out as 'Page,ad,page,ad,page,ad' and only a few pages further in are there any pages at all which manage a double page spread without seeing an advert. When you get to these sections, the magazine starts to look good, but with adverts every other page it gets confusing and un-attractive to read.

The magazine is clearly aimed at Middle class Males around the age of 25-35, but also at aspirational people at the 18-30 range. On vibe's website (Which is the company, not just the magazine) they say that "The new Vibe is the premier destination for urban music, entertainment, culture and lifestyle for the aspirational 18-34 year old." You can tell this by the way the articles, pages and adverts are - The contents pages feature one person dressed in designer clothes on each page, all the adverts are for things such as cars in the £20,000-40,000 range, designer clothes and perfumes. Some of the articles are about very expensive things themselves; one section is about fashion and features a $200 bow tie. Most articles and interviews feature a lot of writing, which also suggests a more educated audience. This can be compared with something like The Sun newspaper, which features and lot of pictures and minimal amounts of writing and is not aimed at such an educated, intelligent audience.

However, you can tell from it's style that it is aimed at a younger audience. For a start, the type of music that this magazine is about is usually liked by younger audiences anyway (RnB,Rap, Hip Hip) and this is further illustrated on the front cover, where you see Usher, and Usher only. The word "Usher" also appears on the front cover with a small quote from him, to further clarify who it is - you can probably tell just with a glance if this magazine is about the type of music you like just from a glance at it. It adopts a sort of "Smart-Casual" style, in which it looks professional, but certainly not Formal. Throughout the magazine, whether it is an article, contents page, front cover, interview, special feature, it keeps the same type of style in which writing varies in colour, size and format, but only on a small scale. For example. the front cover involves only 2 colours of writing - yellow and white. On a feature article I have talked about the only colours are white,red, and black. By doing things like this, the articles always look interesting, but still maintain a professional and casual look.

Feature Articles - Ideas and Analysis of Others

In the October/November issue of Vibe magazine, there are 2 very different types of feature article. Although neither of them would be the style I am looking for, I could use ideas from them both to help me with my feature article.
One of the feature articles is to do with twitter, and more specifically, what famous artists have been tweeting lately. The article is colourful and visually attractive - it uses and very simple blue/white colour palette which works well, and the layout is good too, with rounded boxes, rounded pictures and once again - varied text size. Although this is not the type of article I will be doing, (Mine will be more like an interview) there are defiantly things that I could use from this article to make my article better. In the rounded boxes there are specific bits of information aside from everyones tweets - there is a box about Kanye West joining twitter, a story about FABOLOUS and T-pain, and 'displays of public affection,' of course, all on twitter. In between and around all these boxes are the tweets themselves. The name of the person tweeting is in bold white letters, and the tweets themselves are in standard white letters. Some of the tweets have a small picture next to them, and these tweets have a bigger font size as they are most important/funny/controversial tweets. The variation of Short stories, tweets, pictures and small bits of text keep this page interesting and appealing to look at. With a layout like this, is does not seem a chore to read a lot of writing, since it is all spread out, varied and with a good colour scheme.

The other article is an interview with "Soulja Boy." It's very much a simple article, which is laid out nicely and will appeal to people who are interested in reading about him. It is a 6 page article, and has an "order" of picture, writing, picture, writing. The main background colour is a plain white, and the only other colours in the article are white and red (aside from the pictures) This is very much a colour scheme which I am interested in for the magazine generally, since it is kept simple, but because the background is white it makes the simple colours stand out.

For the first page, there is a title which says "Life of a shooting star" which takes up half of the first page. It is a centered title in a graffiti style writing, which large speech marks and a stylish underline. Under the title is a short sentence which gives an overview of what the article is about - this is written in black. Further below this is the name of the writer and photographer, with a little symbol so you know which person is which - This is in red writing. When the article begins, the first sentence is "Soulja Boy is boiling inside." The 'S' takes up three lines, and his entire name is in red before the rest of the article is in black. From what I have just said, you can see how the page is varied in it's simple colours and styles to keep the page looking interesting, and this is what I would like my article to be like - very simple, not to many colours, but interesting due to varied colours, font sizes and shapes.

On the other 2 'writing' pages, the page is essentially filled with writing, all apart from in the middle in the page, where there is a quote. This is obviously one of the most interesting quotes from the page, and once again, is colour is varying. It has large red speech marks, the middle of the quote is red, with the start and end of the quote being black. Once again, this makes what is essentially a small bit of writing in the middle of a page full of writing, look like an interesting variant to the page. Also, every time a new subject is started in the writing, the start of the paragraph is emboldened and in capital letters.

Mood Board and analysis of Target Audience

This moodboard I have created is one for my magazine, but also slightly based on Vibe magazine, since I want them to appeal to roughly the same audience. I got this quote directly from Vibe's website:

"The new Vibe is the premier destination for urban music, entertainment, culture and lifestyle for the aspirational 18-34 year old."

The items/people on the moodboard represent what these people are likely to enjoy, like, eat, play etc. Since it is aimed a a young age group (And my magazine may have a slightly younger target audience, perhaps 15-30) I have things like video games, and food like Mcdonalds, as younger people so do enjoy these things more than older age groups. I have a picture of Usher and Eminem to represent the kind of music my readers would like, to represent that my magazine is aimed more towards Males, and also to represent that my magazine is aimed at and black and white people, not just black people who are usually associated with this type of music.

My target audience in terms of class will be B,C1,C2, as it says on my moodboard. Those who are middle class may be to afford some of the things that the C1/C2 are aspiring to get, but they will all want roughly the same things that the moodbaord suggests. For example, the B class readers may be able to afford the designer clothes on the Moodbaord, but the C2 class may not - but the C2 class would still want them, which is what the readers would have in common regardless of class.

Demographics:
Band: B,C1,C2
Age: 15-30
Mainly Male Readership: 90% male, 10% female
Single 65%, Living with partner 25%, married 10%
Students/graduates/Young Single Men

Contents Page - Ideas and Analysis of Others

The contents page of Vibe is spread over 2 separate pages - one page for features, and one page for "Departments," which is essentially the regular features of the magazine. There are several adverts between, before and after each contents page too. Personally, although these pages are professionally designed, I do not like the idea of having things between the contents pages. The magazine has a confusing feel to it because of the mixture of adverts, contents pages and actual magazine story's near the front. I would prefer my contents page to be on one page (maybe 2, but they would be next to each other!)

On each separate page, there is one main picture on the right side of the page, and the listings of the contents are on the left. The writing is small, but much like the front cover it varies is colour, size and format. For example, on the contents page with the features on it, the page number is black, the title is white and bold, and the description is white. Here is an example:

84 STORY OF A SHOOTING STAR
Since 17, De Andre "Soulja Boy" Way has
consistently crafted mindless jingles while
maintaining a touch of naivete. Now a
year short of 21, the tatted web fiend
comes clean for the first time about
his most lethal shots fired.

The other contents page (Listing the regular features) Has a bit more colour to it, almost a colour code for each section, with also a little symbol. The layout of each item listed is the same as the other contents page, except the page number has a colour, and about each section is a small symbol which is the same colour as the number. I think this is good because it keeps the same style, but is more interesting to look at, and it mixes things up a little bit to ensure the readers interest in these contents pages.

The contents Page on Mixmag is very different to the contents pages of Vibe. It has a very "square" style, with 1 square picture in the middle of the page, and one smaller image just above where (some) of the contents is listed. Several straight lines separate different parts of the page, for example a Line at the bottom with information about the free CD underneath it, and a line at the top which has "Mixmag December 2010 Contents" written above it. The style is much the same on the other page, but somewhat reversed - the pictures are this time in the middle and on right side of the page, with the contents listing on the left. Personally, I think that this page looks on a lot better than the first contents page, because your eye is naturally drawn to the left side of the page because we read left t right, but also to the right side of the page because of the pictures, which gives the page a good balance. However, on the first page, I found myself just ignoring the contents listing.

One thing that both magazines have in common is the varied font sizes and colours on the contents listing themselves. Much like vibe, mixmag sticks to a simple colour pallet, only using white and yellow to list its contents, with variations in front size, format and even the actual fonts. I think this is defiantly something I will do in my magazine, since it gives the contents listing or more interesting, but certainly not over-the-top look.

Initial Ideas for my own music magazine

I think my music magazine will be about the Genres of Hip hop, rap, and RnB. After speaking with a friend who is very much into this type of music, (And has a wider knowledge of it than me) we have come up with a few names. The best of which (For the magazine name) so far has been "Dubbed." I like the idea of having one main image of the front that overlays the Mast Head like Vibe magazine, and I think my best current idea would be a cover like this, but with the main person being a sort of silhouette. I thought of this idea because it could tie in with my feature article - the silhouette would add a sense of mystery as to who the person is (There could be a cover story with a clue, for example "The Next Eminem)" which might make the reader curious, and want to buy the magazine to read about them. I would like my feature article to be an interview with the artist who is on the front cover. I am not quite sure how it would be laid out, but I have thought of having the same picture that is on the front cover (or similar), but not silhouetted.

There could potentially be other pictures of famous stars down the bottom to ensure the reader is interested in buying the magazine, and to further clarify the target audience of the magazine. I also think that my magazine will aim at a slightly younger audience than Vibe does, with more recent artists mentioned on the front, but still trying to keep the reasonably professional style that vibe has. I have limited ideas for my contents page at the moment compared with the ideas I have for my cover and feature article. I would like it to be a sort of "irregular style, perhaps unorganized, with a generally limited colour pallet (Depending on the front cover) with small splashes of colour, although at the moment I'm not sure on specific details of how it would all go together.

Front Cover - Ideas and Analysis of Others

My magazine will be similar to "Vibe" magazine, since it it mainly about the rap/hip-hop genres, and it also has a slight focus on the celebrity's themselves, and you can see from the twitter article on the magazine to the right.
The cover of Vibe magazine usually has the mast head at the top, with one main image of a particular artist that usually overlaps the title. I think that this works well, since everyone will still be able to easily work out what is says, but will also get a good idea of the type of magazine Vibe is judging from the person on the front cover. If you have no idea who the person on the cover is, then it may say who it is (Bottom Right) or it may just not be the magazine for you.
This magazine is probably aiming for a young audience, and this may be why there is a limited amount of writing, and what writing there is is large, and brightly coloured. However, there are only 2 colours for the writing (White and Yellow) and they vary in front sizes. This is to keep make sure the writing is easy on the eye, and appealing to read. Having not to much to read means someone may be more like to read everything that is written on the front page, and obviously these headings will be the main features that drag people in and make them want to buy the magazine. I personally think that having minimal - but attractive and important writing will be good for magazine too, since my magazine and vibe will be aimed at roughly the same audience.
The combination of one main image and small amounts of highly visible writing gives this magazine an interesting, lively, but still overall professional look. Judging from the artists the magazine is about, (but also considering its more professional look) I would say Vibe magazine is aimed at young people who are lower middle class.

I think that mixmag is aimed at roughly the same age group as vibe, (Perhaps a little younger) but still around the same class. Mixmag is a more of a clubbing magazine, which maybe a slightly different culture, but this still is not a cheap hobby, and the adverts inside of both magazines are generally about expensive items. However, Mixmags front cover is quite different to Vibe's. The front cover of Mixmag is a lot more vibrant (which suggests a younger audience) and once again, has minimal wording. The masthead is at the top with writing above it (similar to Vibe) however there is only one main cover story, which is compiled in a short sentence on the right. They make use of varying font colours, but the sizes remain the same. They also make use of 1 main image, (Partly obscured by the CD) although the main image on Mixmag is a computer generated one as appose to a real image - it is a bright and vibrant image which keeps with the colour scheme of this particular colour, a sort of "neon blue." It also has a blue "Star" near the top0 right which includes more information, which again adds to the information on the front of the magazine, but keep it interesting and appealing to read - this is something I made use of when doing my preliminary task. Personally, I think that my magazine will be more like vibe - I like the idea of small bits of writing with different sizes and colours rather than a whole sentence, and I also prefer the idea of a real image.I also prefer the more professional look of vibe compared to the more vibrant look of Mixmag, and when I asked my friends (Aged 16-17) which magazine they preferred the look of, near enough all of them said Vibe.