Preliminary Task Review

This is my completed preliminary task,and to be honest I don't like it very much!  However I did what I did for a reason, so lets's go through it. For the cover, I chose the dark blue background because It make the red and white text stand out really well. That, along with the red sections of text, are the favourite things about my magazine. I think the Barcode is a little to big, and I used the white writing to stand out, which I think looks about average. The reason for the poor quality cutting around the outside of the picture is purely because when making the task I was new to photoshop, however I have learned from this and feel I can carry what I have learned into the main task.

Institutional Research

I have been doing some institutional research on the magazine industry, to try and work out how they operate. Here is a list of some of the top companies and the magazines they produce. 

From this i've learned that companies don't like to put all their eggs in one basket. What I mean by this is that all of the big companies have lots of different genres of magazine going at the same time, this will make sure that the company will always have a magazine that is relevant and popular in culture. Having looked at each of the companies, the one that would be most likely to produce my magazine would be Bauer Media Group. I've chosen them because they have experience in music magazines with front runners such as Kerrang! and Q, however they don't have any hip/hop magazines on their books which is where I think my magazine could fit in.

Weather Problems!

I was going to do a photoshoot outside, but the weather is trying it's best to stop me!

The weather isn't actually to much of a problem because rainy days look very authentic as to what the British weather does. It also fits the gritty and dark theme i'm going for. If is was to be raining hard enough to stop shooting, then it's not much of a problem. This is because i'm not shooting in a studio, meaning I can take new pictures whenever I like, proving that my model is available at the same time.

Artists for my magazine...

Here are some of the artists I may use in my magazine....


J.Cole - Power Trip 


Kendrick Lamar - Swimming Pools


Apollo Brown & OC - Prove Me Wrong



The Genre is rap/ R'n'B, because A, it is a genre I like and B, it is a genre that I know a lot of other people like too.

Front cover plan

The Front Cover:

Colour Usage: For my front cover, I would like to use mostly dark colours, with a few bright colours that will stand out and attract attention. I would like my title to be red, with a yellow/gold outline, to make it really stand out. I may use this on all the text on the front page, but i am not sure yet. I would like to use a brick wall for  background to make the magazine look more natural. It also goes with my urban theme.

Text Usage: With my text I want to tell the reader what the magazine is about, at a glance, so it needs to be big, bold and eye-catching. Perhaps an interview with a current top artist. This will give the magazine credibility straight away. I would like the sell line to be linked with the main image so i can have an explanation for the main image in plain sight. The main heading will point to the main article inside, (preferably the double page spread)  

Image Usage: I only plan to use one image on my front cover, the main image. I hate magazines that have to many images on the cover. It looks tacky, overworked and most of all it just doesn't look right. That is why I would like one massive image, that represents what the magazine is about. I have a few ideas for what the image might look like, but i would like to take a few different shots, and choose from there.

Jarvis Cocker

This is a practice magazine cover I Made, with Jarvis Cocker being the model. We had to find our own picture of  Jarvis, and I think I did quite a good job on that front, in being able to find a good mid-shot where he is doing a interesting thing with his hands, which would draw attention to the magazine. The main reason I am doing this is to get practice on photoshop with cutting out pictures and using the text. Now, I think I have nailed the cutting here, but I have to admit the text could be better! It all helps towards the final thing though!

NME contents

I like the way that the massive tagline dominates the page because it really shows you that the magazine means business is very professional and good at what it does. It also shows great confidence from the publishers to have the name of the magazine all over the place because it shows the company know they have a good product. This isn't something i'd do however because my magazine isn't an established brand, it would be risky and perhaps silly to replicate this. I'm also not keen on the layout. I really don't like the way that there is a bar on the left in tiny little writing that makes the page look messy and crowded. I'd like my magazine to look quite open in layout, meaning that i'd like to have at lest some space left on the page, so that it looks like we've thought about where each thing should go instead of throwing it on the page.

Jay Z cover