Planning Front Cover & Contents Page

To plan my front cover and contents page, I needed a plan to work my magazine from. So I made a draft of what I wanted my front cover and contents page to look like.

These two pictures show what I plan to work from (I know its not very organised but it was just a rough plan). I planned where my masthead and main image will be for my front cover. Although I wasn't quite sure how big or how my picture will look, I planned the sell lines around them roughly, but this can always be changed if it does not fit in well. Within my contents page, I planned where the pictures will be placed, and picture one will be where the feature article star will be. I have planned to put the star in within all the pages I create, therefore when doing my photoshoot in the future, I must have lots of pictures available. 

From this, I can never miss out vital conventions and not forget where they are meant to be throughout the magazine, so this is really useful for me. 

After I had done this, I researched really into who my magazine will target and all the themes within. When I gathered this information, I presented this on an application I finally knew how to work, Prezi.

Music Magazine Industry

Music Magazine Industry

Before I start actually making and designing my magazine, I needed to figure out who my target audience will be and how I must use different conventions to be able to attract my readers.

For example, this may be different colours, fonts and structure. The language used is also very important or else it may disinterest those who prefer simple wording. Therefore, I had to look at the whole music industry, figuring out what genre is the most popular for readers and who to really aim my magazine to. After I researched this I made a power point on Scribd to show what I have learnt from this research.

Music Magazine Feature Article Analysis

Presentation on Music Magazine Feature Article

Like my last post, I analysed many conventions within a magazine. However, I had never researched a feature article before this post and therefore this was a challenge I had to overcome before actually making my real magazine. Therefore, I researched on various websites on all the feature article conventions out there. It was a more difficult process to find than the front cover and contents page conventions, however when I did everything came together and I was again able to analyse a rock magazine feature article. Which I can use for reference at any time whilst planning or making my magazine.

Music Magazine Front Page and Contents Page Analysis

Presentation on Music Magazine Analysis Front Cover and Contents

Before I began making my own Music Magazine, I had to look for the conventions that are usually in a Music Magazine so I have an idea of how to structure my magazine and what to include. As I did this for my preliminary task I was already aware of many conventions that are already apparent in various magazines. However, due to my last task being quite unsatisfactory in my opinion, I needed to make sure my main task hit all my high expectations, and therefore had to really understand all conventions and where they usually are around the magazine.
Therefore I picked two different magazines, one for the front cover and the other for the contents page, and analysed it for conventions. I made sure they were both music magazines (due to my main task being to create a music magazine) and here is my work.