First Draft of Front Cover

     This is the draft of my contents page. I used the main image of the front man from Skies Of Until, the band used in my features page. I used my research to look at the conventions of a magazine, so that I knew what was essential to include. I made sure that i had a dominant masthead, automatically increasing the brand identity with the consumers of the magazine. I also made sure that there was a large main image, and used a direct image to catch the readers attention. I then made the text overlap onto the picture enhancing the interaction between the image and the text, telling the reader that this story is linked with the image. I also added a poster special, as I've seen this feature in Kerang, and thought that it would be applicable to my target audience. The other sell lines are smaller than the main feature, so that it's clear what the main feature is, but also shows that there's a lot more content to the magazine. The banners at the top and bottom, are also there to show how much more content there is, even if they're not read by the customer, they still glance at them and recognise that there are many other band and artists featured within the magazine. 

Improvements To Be Made:

- Most magazines have the head of the artist featured overlapping the text. To improve i could do this on my final draft.

- A subheading under the the masthead may make it clearer to the consumer market who the target audience for this magazine is, if it's not already clear due to the mix of artists featured.

- The text saying 'Katy Perry...' should also be moved up a bit as there is a large gap above it, and at the moment is slightly merging into the 'Win!...' text below it. 

First Draft of Contents Page

Below is my first draft of my contents page, which features all the articles that will be included further into the magazine. I was inspired to use the top half of the page for a large image, and the bottom half for the text of the features coming up in the magazine, by Kerrang. I looked at this layout within my research and thought that it was incredible effective, as even readers who don't read the contents page fully, can have a quick glance and can see an extra feature which they may not have noticed that was on the front cover. 

The colour scheme follows the house style of the front cover, as well as having fonts in common with all three pages. It follows the conventions of a traditional contents page as it has an editors note, lists of features and page numbers of articles and sectioned content e.g. 'features' or 'reviews'. But it also challenges the traditional contents page by having the editors note at a slant, and by adding another feature which is not usually featured on a contents page. The feature is 'Top Picks', and I included it as I wanted to increase the chances of the reader stopping to read the contents page, by giving them a further insight on the staff behind the magazine, and by giving them a heads up on new singles and albums, as well as other happenings in the music world. 

Improvements:

To enhance this pages' effectiveness, there are some changes that need to be made. 

- One being the adding of the missing picture by the 'VIP Meet and Greet with Olly Murs'. 

- Other images could also be added to interest the reader into looking at the images and then making them want to read some more into the contents of the magazine. 

- My branding is not fluent with the front cover logo of 'The Mix', so a white logo would be needed to put into place next to 'This Week In...' to add fluency to the magazine. 

- The 'Top Picks' section where staff have mentioned their favourite song or album this week also needs to become less 'boxy', by getting rid of the outline around the text, meaning that it flows more and encourages the audience to read on rather than stopping at the edge of the box.

- A page number would also be useful to the reader next to 'Unseen Pictures of Green Day's Stadium Tour', so that the page can easily be located by the reader, instead of them having to search through the contents below, keeping their interest levels high. 

First Draft of Features Pages

Below are the two double page spreads that I have created for my feature pages of my magazine. Even though the brief said 'a double page spread', I've created two as I personally think that this is more accurate to other music magazines which I've noticed from my research, and think that it works really well. From my research into music magazines, it's not often that the main feature of the magazine, in which mine is, is only across one page. This inspired me to go further and create two, also meaning that I had more of a chance to show my innovative idea's for the opening double page spread. 

 From looking at my first draft of opening double page spread, I think that the page itself gets across the theme of the article to follow, as well as portraying what sort of band is featured to an audience who is unaware before reading on. The biggest problem with this page is the placing of the text, as it goes through the middle, and would be cut out when properly forming part of a magazine. I need to look at how I could rearrange the text in a slightly different way to overcome this problem. I also need to see if it's possible for me to take some more pictures, but featuring all of three of the members as this is what the article is based upon. This was my plan from the beginning, but due to inconvenience of the band I could only photograph Jamie Ellis. However, I do think that by just using images of him on his own grabs the readers attention as it gives them more to focus on, and makes it clear who the front man of the band is. 

Above is the second double page spread of the draft of the features page. I think that this page was successful in following the conventions of a music magazine as it has features such as a pull quote, a heading in the top left naming the band, columned text and the main image on the right as this is the first page the reader see's when turning the page. However I do think there is still a lot of room for improvement. The smaller image is oddly placed when looking at the whole spread, so the layout of fitting in the image with the text would need to change. I could also look into the different sizes of text, for example on the first paragraph, this could be enlarged further to make the page even more eye-catching. 

Front Cover Screen-Shots

This shows the screen-shots of the stages I took when designing and creating my first draft of my front cover. I used the program Serif PagePlus 11 at both home and school when creating all three of my drafts, and will continue to use this program when finalising my designs. 

Front Cover Screen-Shots

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'The Mix' Presentation

Here is the video of the proposal that me and my partner did in front of the class, this goes with the powerpoint 'The Mix Proposal'. 

Contents Page Screen-shots

When I first started to create my contents page, I printed out the basic layout of the page, and annotated it saying what I need to change and what I need to make sure I do when continuing the process of making the contents page. Click the image to enlarge and make the handwritten text more visible. 

Here are my step by step screen-shots of creating my first computerised draft of my contents page:

Contents Page Screen-shots

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