Evaluation

Evaluation

Final Pieces

Final Pieces

Drafts

Before settling on my final designs, my products front cover went through a different style before settling on the final piece.

This image was my original plan for the front cover. It was not used because I felt that the bands faces were not suitable for the cover, as they may put some people off. Also, after having a discussion with the band, we decided that having Mike's back towards the audience may have negative connotations, so we decided not to use it. The image wasn't too suitable regardless, as having both members on the cover meant little room for titles, which were important.

However, I do not regret making this draft as it served as a practice towards using InDesign; a software I did not use for my preliminary.

Use of Photoshop

I do not want to heavily rely on photoshop to manipulate photos through the making of my magazine. This is because I had agreed with the band that heavy use of digital editing is dishonest and they are against it. I had to respect the bands wishes, but they agreed to allow me to adjust the front cover image, as it was not yet completely suitable for the cover as the musician appears to be too dark.



This is the image as without digital effects.
As you can see, not only is it too dark, but because of his sunglasses you can easily see me taking the photo in the reflection.



Here is the improved image.
It is a lot brighter, with a bluer sky and greener grass. The musician's face also stands out a lot more, making people more likely to notice him. To do this I had to edit the image's contrast and curves until the desired effect was achieved. Unfortunately, this added colours to areas of which I did not want colour to be, such as the whites on the eyeballs and the teeth, forcing me to edit them to resemble the original picture. I did this by selecting them individually using the quick select tool and putting them through the same process as before.

We decided to add the galaxy to the sunglasses because this was a simple solution to the glasses reflection problem and it portrayed the bands interest in the supernatural. I achieved this effect by aquiring a copyright free image of the galaxy. I needed to select the inside of the glasses using the quick select tool and creating a layer for the galaxy. I used a clipping mask on the selected glasses to allow the galaxy to appear through it. I decreased opacity slightly to give a small amount of reflection to the glasses and added a Guassian Blur to make the galaxy appear to be blured by the glasses.

I needed to add the magazines logo into the background during this time because I only knew how to implement it using photoshop, I did not know how to achieve this on Adobe Indesign.

Photos for magazine

In order to have content which fits my target audience, I felt I needed to have a band which said audience is likely to listen to.

I got into contact with a local group called Icarus. After asking them, they were happy to feature in my magazine in both photographs and an interview.

We discussed potential ideas for the photographs and decided to collect the props needed for the pictures. We carried out a risk assessment.

This is the risk assessment.

http://www.scribd.com/full/30911975?access_key=key-2l9ahokkejghjor7pycn
General Risk Assessment Form

We decided to shoot the photos on the 21st of March as this day was unlikely to have bad weather.


Here are some of the photos taken on that day.



This photo features props we had aquired for the shoot, such as a red arm chair. Arms chairs are often used to symbolise culture, so we felt placing it in a natural atmosphere creates contrast between the band, representing their maturity despite their chaotic environment.


This image shows the band climbing the tree. It would fit naturally in an A4 picture because of the portrait format. The image could be showing their adaptation to nature and, with the shakespeare bust, intelligence.




This image shows the band on a cliff. It shows danger and movement due to the unlikely position of the band. It shows danger and is an action shot, giving an exciting vibe. Unfortunately, I do not believe this image can be used in my final product due to the flash ruining the quality of the image.



This image shows the band using the armchair from the previous image as a vehicle in the road. Although they were not actually moving, I was able to make them appear to be by focusing on the road instead of them. This image could be showing supernatural abilities or daredevilishness due to the unlikely image. Again, this is not suitable for my final piece due to the low lighting and flash.

http://yfrog.com/g4img3021gj

This is my final image. It is suitable for the main cover because it is quite well detailed and features room for text. The mountains in the background also provide information into the location of band.

IDEA

I have decided that the target audience I wish to appeal to are aged 17-30 rock music listeners. This is because the group is large and I believe their is potential for a rock music magazine in a mature style aimed at this age group.

CONTENTS

This is the contents page from DRUMMER magazine. The contents page is used to inform the reader which pages they can find their desired articles on. This specific contents page is just one of many in this magazine, as there are different contents pages for different genres, i.e. Features, Gear, Lessons.
This particular contents page is for Features, but still has a range of different articles, such as interviews, instruction articles and reviews.