Inspiration for magazine

Since finishing my rough cut and taking the criticism on board I have made a big decision in terms of taking my magazine forward and improving it.  I will start again which may seem like a bold move. It is not something I have taken on lightly and it is because the I think I received more criticism than praise from my rough cut. It was not a product I was happy with in truth. My rough cut was based upon NME magazine mainly and the style did not quite work with how I wanted it to. This may be a bold move starting again instead of improving what I already have but I believe I can make a much better product second time around. I will now search for inspiration and direction for my new design and idea.

The changing of my logo

Now despite my logo not being an area that needed to see improvement I have changed the logo to something that prefer as a I think the design is more original I like the look of.

This is the old logo for my magazine named AMP. I originally based this design off of NME magazine with there three bold letters in the corner so I incorporated the design and altered it slightly by having the 'AM' in black and the 'P' in red, which linked with other bits of text on different pages so it had some coordination. The font used for the old logo is American Captain.
I then decided as I am having a complete redesign from my original magazine I will change the logo to complete the fresh start that is happening after the rough cut. Now this logo is based off Mojo magazine if anything but is not so similar unlike the old logo.

This my new AMP logo and I think the changes are highly significant but they still fit the conventions for the target genre. This new font Atlantic Cruise which is a lot thinner in comparison too the old logo. The line affect was something that I was just playing around with and it just happened all of sudden there was no initial intention to include it, but I think it works well with the new font.

Rough cut Double Page Spread

This is my media double page spread rough cut which is based on the genre of Indie/Rock.

One good point would be the text and the colour and font and how it has been used and presented on the page, especially the DOM-O-NIC I think is particularly strong and the large text on the other page is quite good. The image itself is also quite good despite the poor photo shopping. Also the continuation of the black, white and red is good as it has been used throughout all three pages. I am quite happy with the overall layout of this page.
However there are quite a lot of negatives on this page. For instance the photo shopping of the model is extremely poor and I now know somewhere that needs extreme time and detail on which is the care I take with the photo shopping. Also my DPS only have two columns of text and where as music magazine usually have three so I know I could easily improve upon this. Another thing is that the page does not have page numbers which is quite a rookie mistake. Also the gradient does not have as dominating an affect as I was originally hoping for.
So despite the quality being poor I know what I can do to improve this page overall so it has more codes and conventions.

Rough cut Contents Page

This my media coursework rough cut contents page. The genre I am trying to access is the Rock/Genre as I think is quite popular at the moment. 
I received feedback from my teachers and peers as well as my own thoughts and opinions on the rough cut. A positive area was the use of colours that i used, the red, black and white which is typically from indie rock magazines. This work especially well I think on the text and up against the different backgrounds and how they contrast compliments one another. The layout of the page also quite decent as the it is supposedly image dominated despite the poor quality of the images. 
There are significantly more flaws that positives on this page. For starters the images are poor and appear to look like floating heads in the midst of nothingness. Also some of the photo shopping is very poor and needs significant improvement. Also the gradient doesn't have any real relevance to the page and most of it is not even in line. Also it was picked upon that the actual numbers should go higher than what they already are.
So despite a few positives the negatives on this page are significant and needs major improvement. Despite this I know what I need to do to improve it and hopefully can do as the is only the rough cut.

Rough cut Front Cover

This my media coursework rough cut front cover page. The genre I am trying to access is the Rock/Genre as I think is quite popular at the moment. 

My personal thoughts on my rough cut are:

I feel the way that I have strong elements and also weak ones in terms of the codes and connotations of the specific genre I am focusing on. The logo AMP is similar to the one that is NME the very famous music magazine and this is possibly one of the stronger points on this front cover. Also the black, white and red colour scheme matches the conventions very well and I feel this works very well so this may be something that I will be looking keep. I also think the little details and features on like the other artists in the magazine is a particularly strong point of my front cover.

Now despite this rough cut having strong areas, there are flaws that need to be corrected and improved but after all it is a rough cut. My first improvement would be to retake new photos and probably use different models that fit the conventions a lot better as I feel it would improve the piece as a whole. For instance there is now correlation in the clothes and that is a fault of my own as I was not as demanding as I perhaps should of and need to be. Another area that is need of improvement is the cutting out of the images themselves as so areas are blurry and all round is a poor use of Photoshop. I have also use the font Times New Roman for the date and issue and price, which I was specifically told not to use and that needs correcting.

I feel there are probably a lot more faults than positives but I now know where the improvements to go and after all it is a rough cut but I feel I can benefit my finished product from this.

Magazine name

Here is a pie chart showing the results of the name of my Media Music Magazine. The winner is AMP! I went and asked 20 peers as I thought it was a good amount for a relative sample. I asked a few peers to help me create name idea and I was particularly happy that  AMP won because it was actually one the names I came up with. I conducted the research on a piece of paper and then wrote the results up in this chart but next time use and online polling system.

Contents analysis 4

Here is a photo of Lottie from the Foo Fighters and it is from Q magazine.

Colour scheme
Like most of Q's contents page it follows the common colour scheme of black,white and red which is very conventional. It is very common in this type of genre and works well with what the model is wearing.
I do like the use of three colours as a dominant colour scheme but I may change the colours as I might light to challenge the conventions.
Image
The image is a very dominated photo of Lottie standing with a full body shot walking with a guitar. The image is enlarged on the page to show that he is the main focus of the page. This works well with the layout of the page.
I am willing to have my model dominate the page like the has. I also like the idea of having the model standing up and being able to see the whole of the model.
Text
The text used is only really for the articles down the left side of the page mainly but there is some also at the top. It is mainly san-seirf but there is a little bit of serif fonts used for some of the headings of the article. I do like how the articles are all neatly down the left side and use different fonts for both the headings and the actual description of the article itself.
Layout
The layout seems to be image dominated instead of the blocky look. This works very well with the type of image that has been used as all the other information is put behind the image and you can see that it is the main focus.
I may try and use the image dominated look as I prefer is actually to the blocky look and thinks it allows you to focus the attention the more important areas of the page.