david carson.

David Carson was an American graphic designer who brought many innovative ideas to the making of magazine covers. He mainly focused in the use of different typography when designing his covers for his magazine 'Ray Gun'. 

His designs went completely against what anyone else had seen before. Even though you can barely read the sell lines and probably will have no idea who's in it excluding the main image i really like some of them! This one in particular i really like with the photo/white stripe divide. I probably won't design my magazine around his ideas as they go completely against conventions and thats not something i want to do.

cover font.

I decided now I'm looking at doing another draft of my front cover I would do some research into the font for my title. I set up 7 of my favourite fonts on a page and then printed this off to ask people what their preference would be. The page looked like this;

of the 15 people I asked 5 chose option 5 and 3 people chose 3 and 4. The others only had single choices.

So now I'm going to try the cover with font 5 and see what i can make!

 

contents page. 2nd draft.

This was the one i liked the least out of my first drafts so I despreately needed to sort that. I've looked at a lot more indie magazines since making my first draft and also have asked people their opinion on my first drafts. A general concenus was that it was too black and white so I put some colour in this one - crazy i know.

I like this one a lot more and think it looks way more conventional than my first attempt.



'The Fly' contents deconstruction.

This is the contents from an issue of 'The Fly'. It takes up one page as the one on the right is an advertisment.

The majority of the page is taken up of an image, this is of an artist featured in the magazine and in the right bottom corner is the page its featured on.

The top of the page is the date of the issue and in a smaller font 'CONTENTS'.

The bottom of the page is taken by the other features in the magazine, these aren't categorised but instead ordered by the page number.

They've used a simply layout so it's easy to see the pages and whats on them.

'The Fly' double page spread deconstruction.

This is a double page from 'The Fly'. This is from their newest issue and taken from their website view of it.

The main image fills one whole side of the double page. This is something found in a lot of magazines though sometimes the images will be smaller. 

The colour scheme for the page is simple. The black and white scheme with the bland colours from the image make the page and writing quite bold. It also fits with the connotations of the band name as 'sacrifice' is quite dark and sinister.

The picture is conventional of the indie genre as they normally go against the conventions of a typical magazine - skinny smiling faces. The people in the image are under dressed and only some are looking at the camera.

The buttons at the bottom of the image aren't actually part of the magazine but were there to navigate around the online version.

The bigger 'W' at the start of the article is almost a must for any article. I don't know why, you just see it everywhere, but credit to it, it looks good.

'The Fly' cover deconstruction.

To see the kind of style i want for my cover I've decided to deconstruct an existing Indie music magazine.

the bands name is one of the most prominent texts on the page. Its central to the cover and is what primarily catches your eye.

the title of the magazine appears at the top of the magazine and is in a sans serif font. This is the least formal font and would be the font most familiar to the target readers.

the only burst on the page is in the shape of a pricing ticket and labels the magazine as free. This is in yellow and is the only easily identifiable colour on the page.

this is a banner at the top of the page and is simply band names split by a slash. This would maybe highlight some bands that are featured in this issue.

although you can't really see it very well this is the dateline which is underneath the title. Its states the issue date of the magazine as well as the internet site, letting people access the magazine on more than one medium.

the main image on the cover is of the band 'The Horrors'. They are standing so that all of their faces can be seen but some obstruct others bodies. The backgroud is a dark cloudy sky which seems to fit with the bands overall look. They seem quite scruffy which follows typical conventions of indie bands.

  

Blumler and Brown - 1972

Many people have come up with theories as to 'what people do with media'. Bulmer and Brown came up with four primary factors for why people may use media:

• Diversion - Something to do, escape from reality/problems.
• Personal Relationships - Using media to discuss with friends afterwards. Media as a substitute for 'real contact' (this idea heighten with the age of facebook?).
• Personal Identity or Individual Psychology - Defining yourself by your media texts, building you sense of self.
• Surveillance - Finding out about the world, finding out info.

These all seem rather relevant as to why a person would buy/read a music magazine and I think this theory can be the least criticized.

I think all of these i will try to apply to my magazine. I especially want to concentrate on the Individual Psychology. I want my magazine to almost be able to define the 'indie' genre. I want people to be able to read it or even just look at it and be able to relate to it. I also want them to be able to gather ideas from it about their lives, places they want to go, bands they want to see.