Skills development for blog

This is the first masthead I trialled, I decided to see if the masthead stood out better without the black background as originally planned. I look it looks much more professional without the black background, however I feel this masthead blends too much into the background.

I think the two colours of white and black work really well together. If I moved the masthead into the page by a few mm I feel it would look better. I think the outer glow works really well to make the masthead stand out more but also makes it look more professional and not like it has been designed using a simple programme such as paint.

I don’t like this masthead for a number of reasons. I think the black ‘C’ blends into the background too much, I also feel that it makes the masthead look more separated and as if it has been designed as the ‘C’ and then the ‘hart!’. I don’t feel this works well with the style of the front cover of my magazine either. I do however, feel the black outline of the white writing stands out really well from the background.

I think this masthead looks too simple and under designed. I think it looks like it hasn’t been thought about and has been made very simple and quickly.

I decided to try rearranging the letters of ‘Chart!’ for my masthead. I think this works really well and makes the whole masthead really stand out.I feel the design of this works really well and the colours black and white work well with my background.

I really like this masthead, I think it works really well against the background and stands out really well. To improve this further I think I could include more white to outline the black letters though.

I really like this masthead and I feel it is really eye-catching which is needed for my magazine. The black and white contrast each other well and the ratio of white to black is good. I think to improve this masthead further I could thicken the black border very slightly.

This shows my first design for the front cover of my music magazine called ‘Chart!’ I used the same font for the cover line as I did the masthead on this design. I decided that this looked too much the same and I needed to break up the front cover by including a different font.

This shows another design for my ‘Chart!’ music magazine front cover.I chose to use a different font on this front cover, although sticking to the same colour scheme.I added a drop shadow to the font to make it stand out more from the front cover too. On this I have also added a black box along the bottom with white text to add a little more visual interest to the front cover.I chose to keep the white around the barcode because I feel it stands out more and looks a lot better.

On this front cover design I decided to flip the photo horizontally so that the model was on the left hand third so that when the magazines are on shop shelves the model is visible. I also decided that on the previous design the top right hand corner looked a little blank and bare so on this design I decided to move the ‘plus’ section to the top right hand corner to fill the space a little.

On this design I decided to add another cover line “The best of 2011, a playlist of our favourite songs”I aligned this using the grid and formatted a right hand alignment to the words. As I was unsure of where to place this cover line I asked for different opinions from different people asking which one they preferred and which was their favourite. I then decided I didn’t like this arrangement of these cover lines.

This is another front cover design. On this one I decided to align the cover line ‘The best of 2011, a playlist of our favourite songs’ to the right hand side of the page and decided this looks a lot more structured, a lot neater and much more professional.

This is my final front cover design for my music magazine ‘Chart!’ On this I have moved the masthead very slightly to create an invisible border all the way around the edge of the magazine. This makes the magazine front cover look much more professional. I have also moved all the cover lines on the left hand side down slightly to make the models face more visible.

The screenshot to the left shows the barcode which is on the right hand corner of the front cover of my ‘Chart!’ music magazine. I created this barcode on an online barcode generator and then used the Photoshop text tool to add the issue number and price. I aligned these to the right hand side of the barcode for a more professional feel.

The image to the left shows a first draft design for my music magazine’s contents page- Chart!I decided to resize the masthead and make it smaller, but keeping it in the top left hand corner of my contents page. This works well to maintain the house style and also works to emphasise which magazine this is the contents page for.I placed a border around the image to make it look a little bit more interesting and used the colour of my models top as the colour selector, but reduced the opacity slightly to make it less in your face and vibrant. I decided to make it easier for me, not only would I use the grid, but I also placed the red lines as an aid for where to place the text. I will remove these red lines before I finalise my contents page.

The design to the left shows my second design of my contents page for Chart! magazine. On this one I removed the page numbers to see how the design would look without them, before realising they were a necessity for people to find out where they could find this information and these pages. I added a colour box to the bottom right hand corner with text reading “The Wanted. FREE poster inside”. I decided to add a colour box to emphasise and highlight this free gift to my target audience and magazine buyers. I used the colour selector tool on Photoshop to pick out the colour from my models top to fill the colour box with. I filled it the same colour to maintain house style on my contents page.

The design to the left shows my third design for my music magazine’s contents page. On this one I have added the page numbers back in, making sure they are aligned with the rest of the text.

The screenshot to the left shows how I have been able to use the grid in Photoshop to align the text and photo. This grid has been really useful in designing the contents page as it has enabled me too keep all the writing aligned and so give an overall more professional feel to the contents page.On this design I also decided to remove the colour box around “The Wanted. FREE poster inside” however since removing it I realise this free gift does not stand out as much as I want it too. I also feel the colour box broke up the page and made it slightly more visually appealing.

This design led to me changing the background colour. I decided to change the background colour because not only did I think the white background was somewhat plain and boring, but I felt it was harsh on the readers eyes.I also feel the background colour emphasises the masthead and makes it much more obvious rather than it just blending into the background.The colour box also seems less obvious and seems to fit in better with the coloured background, making it look slightly less out of place.

On this design I decided to remove the red guide lines I had given myself to see how the contents page worked without them and how obvious it was that my text was all aligned.

After looking at how I could maintain house style throughout my music magazine called Chart! I decided that I could improve the contents page dramatically by using the same font as I used on my front cover, as in previous designs I had used the same font I was using for my masthead. After realising this, I changed the font to the same one used on the front cover for the cover lines. What font for what?a song for Jennifer – dafont.com for my masthead and text in the colour boxDecibel- dafont.com for my cover lines and contents page subtitlesHigh Tower Text- Photoshop for explanations of pages Futura Md BT- for the titles of the pages

I decided to lay this out in columns but without boxes behind these columns. I used a colour box in the right hand corner to promote the free Wanted poster which is inside my magazine. I located the masthead in the top left hand corner conforming with magazine conventions. I used a photo very similar to the image on the front cover and kept the colour scheme all very blue. I have used the same font- Decibel- as I used on the front cover to maintain a house style. I aligned the subtitles with each other and then each article description is also aligned with the others. I chose not to use the words ‘contents page’ but ‘inside this week’ as I felt this fitted in more with my target audiences language style and is also more interesting and different.

I decided after my previous design that the contents page was difficult to follow and so it needed to be better organised. I changed the contents page around dramatically, arranging all the text in columns and putting colour boxes behind the columns to make them easily distinguishable. I also added an outer glow to the boxes to make them stand out more. I chose to link the outer glow and number boxes colours together, resulting in maintaining a house style. I have also decided that the twitter logo needs the background removed to make it look better.

After producing the previous contents page design I decided that the colours didn’t fit in with the house style and looked somewhat tacky. Therefore I decided to use the same blue that I had used on the background of my double page spread which also maintained the house style. I also replaced the images which I took off Google of the wellies and Adele. This made the contents page far more original. I also added the band name ‘Clueless’ onto the photo as I felt it looked as if the photo had just been stuck on there and didn’t have explanation or meaning.

The image to the left shows my final contents page design. On this contents page I decided to change the image so that it fitted in more with the overall theme of my magazine. I feel this image works well because it is square and so I could add an outer glow to the photo. I also decided to move the page number boxes so that they were more attached to the relevant image and fitted in more with the layout of the contents page. I also added an issue number to the top right hand corner. I decided the band name ‘clueless’ would look better if it was turned sideways so it ran along the edge of the photo.