Adobe Illustrator Practice

In class, we practiced making and designing mastheads, using Adobe Illustrator. Once we knew how to do it, we started playing around with it and was exploring different ways of designing a masthead.

Magazine Ideas

In my magazine, there will be featured articles, of the people who are in multiple issues, and the special articles with exclusive/ special guests/celebrities. There will be news and gossip on all the latest celebrities and information on new trends, to help attract a wider range of people buying this magazine.

Magazine Audience

The target audience for my magazine is people 18-30. I chose this target audience because this was the generation that was introduced to rap and new types of music, and was a generation that most likely did used to buy magazines because online magazines and websites hadn't existed. 
My target audience is of the 'explorers'. The people who like new things, a younger generation who are more likely to be open to the idea of this type of music, as the type of music I will be covering, such as rap, is fairly new.
The gender target is both men and women, as shown by other companies the percentage of people who buy this type of magazine is 50/50 between men and women.

Magazine Name

As we are making our own magazines, we need to come up with our magazine name. As my magazine is to do with music, I decided to find synonyms for the word music. I came across the word 'melody', which means "a sequence of pleasing sounds that make up a particular phrase" - yourdictionary.com/melody/. I then made the name 'Melody Magazine' and checked online if the idea had been taken already. There used to be a company called Melody Magazine, but it had closed down and was no longer in use. 

So, my magazine name is 'Melody Magazine'.

Magazine Evaluation

Magazine Evaluation

My idea for my magazine cover was to be attractive, and to stand out against the others. For the main cover line, I used the colour of ‘success’ that is in the LSC logo, to represent the link to the college, which made it stand out more, and placed it next to the face of the girl on the cover, so it would have been one of the first few things the reader would have seen. The biggest thing I wanted to stand out the most, was the LSC logo, to make sure the reader knows which college they are reading about, and to make sure it sticks in their head. I achieved this by putting it in the top left corner, and having ‘magazine’ written next to it, in black writing with a plain white background to make it stand out more. The last big thing I wanted to stand out was the price of the magazine, the word ‘offer’ stands out most, and is more than likely to get the reader’s attention. Apart from the blue cover line, there are only 3 other cover lines across the whole cover. 2 are in black writing, and 1 is in white writing. The cover line written in white, is done because it is most likely to be the most attractive. ‘Dozing in class’, this statement represents a vast majority of the college, so by having it stand out and grab the reader’s attention like this, it makes it inevitable for the reader to be interested in the rest of the magazine.

The purpose of my contents page was to get a better idea of how LSC College looks like, so the people who go here can see about other things they may have missed out on. So, I included pictures of the lockers, grass area for big football matches and a bird’s eye view of the college. I stuck to the theme of the blue in the LSC logo, to represent their colours, and the links between the magazine cover and contents page. I had the word ‘contents’ stick out in a very unique font, that I did myself using the smudge tool. It is the only word across both pages that is written like this, so this ensures that the person knows they are reading the contents page, and by having it as the biggest piece of writing and having it at the top, ensures that this is the first thing the reader reads. The second biggest thing on the contents page is the phrase ‘lockers available’. This is because everyone who goes to LSC knows that the most asked question is ‘can we buy lockers’. So by popularity, the most sought after thing (the lockers) deserves the biggest writing as it is the highlight of the magazine. That is why, even though this is on my contents page, I left in the number of lockers in each area of the college, and the price of them. I did this because no one wants to waste time searching for the pages to find the information, they most likely want it there and then. The pictures of the college that are in the contents page, are to represent the clean, modern look of the college. So to do this, I added in a picture of the lockers, where it is spotless, and a bird’s eye view of the college, that makes it look clean and gives a whiter effect, to emphasise how modern it is.

One of my classmates left an evaluation on my blog. I agree with his opinion, and I am happy he has seen my intentions of having the LSC logo as the biggest thing on the page, and there are no mentioned improvements to do on my contents and cover page. 

Cover & Contents Page

Using Photoshop, we made our own college contents and magazine pages

Magazine Cover Photoshop

Using Photoshop, we had to make our own magazine covers for LSC, so here is what I have so far,