Planning

Drafts

After researching existing music magazines it was time to begin planning my own magazine. I began by making very brief drafts of my cover, contents page and double page spread. All these drafts tell me is where I plan to put everything such as the title, coverlines and images. It gives me as well as you the chance to see my designs before the final version.

For my magazine cover I have decided to go with design two as from the design to your right hand side you can see that the bands/singers name has been included which is something that may attract more people's attention than just an image. It also allows more room for the coverlines meaning that the magazines contents will be easily noticed.

My contents page is also going to follow design number two as the title for this page is running down the side of the page instead of across the top which is something automatically thought of when using the word 'title'. Including this in my magazine will strengthen its unique entity even more and the more unique my magazine is the more I think it is likely to be purchased. I also chose this deisgn as it left plenty of room for me to include at least one image.

Design one for my double page spread isn't the strongest one as I am unsure about devoting a whole page to an image as it means there will be less room to put information and quotes which are whats included in a music magazine. As you can see from this design the left page also includes an image which to me is too many images and would decrease the amount of space for facts even further.


This design is the one I am going to use for my double page spread as althought it includes two medium sized images it also allows plenty of room for all of the neccessary pieces of information and quotes meaning that there will be an equal balance of each. Another reason I have chosen this design is that everything is spaced out meaning that when the reader opens the magazine to read it it won't look as though too much as been squeezed onto one page.

Genre

I have decided to focus my magazine around the genre of Rock and R&B. I deciced on this genre as I am personlly interested in this genre of music and thought that I would enjoy creating something that appeals to my own tastes as well as my target audiences. I also chose this genre as they were the two most popular types of music on my questionnaire.

Content

The ideas I have had for the content of my magazine is that the singer/band it is focused on is either going on a new tour or giving up their career to be with their family. I chose these stories as they are realistic and can therefore happen in realife showing that the magazine is all about finding the truth behind the celebrity.

Some celebrities also, somehow, managed to hide their personal lives from the camera therefore another story idea could be that the artist has done just this but everything has came out and they are being constantly bombarded by paparzzi.

I have also decided to start the double page spread off as an article and then develop it into a Q&A session with the artist.