D2. Music Magazine: Double Page Spread Specfic Research

The following are similarities for the articles which I will try to use within my work.

Image to the left in most pictures.
The majority has a model from head to chest level, the others have head to waist but no more of the model is seen other than their torso.
Two of them have only two columns, Dolly Parton’s articles has three and Nicki Minaj’s article has five. From  my previous research I saw that three
Two of the articles have a solid background which is plain or with slight differentiation which I would like to recreate.
They all start with a larger letter.
Three of them feature larger text which is a direct quotation from the model.
Three of the articles include bolder writing for the headings/questions for a paragraph.
All of them have no more than two different main text colours.
Half have san serif font as their main body of text font however the other half have serif.
Three of them feature a page number in the bottom right corner.

D1. Music Magazine: Double Page Spread Initial Research

To start my research this time, I decided to approach it differently and just to look at many, pick out key points and then make the research more particular.

Similarities
-They all feature a bigger letter to start
-Most feature a larger piece of the text which is a direct quote.
-Dolly Parton and Nicki Minaj’s pages have bolder sentences which are the questions.
-Apart from the Nicki Minaj article they all have three columns.
-Muse and the NME articles both feature a square shaped image amongst the text.
-All apart from the Nicki Minaj article feature a separate picture and article however I would prefer mine to be integrated-The majority have the focus picture to the left with the writing on the right.
-Lady Gaga and Muse have quite small titles at the top of their writing which is the same colour as the text.
-All articles have black writing and all apart from Lady Gaga have one additional colour which is used sparingly on their text.
I will aim to include most of these basic guides to a double page spread. Additional Research 

 

As I saw the article of Nicki Minaj where the background was one, I wanted to find others of this kind.I prefer it when the text goes around the image like in the Adele and Nicki Minaj as I feel it enables the picture and the writing to become more interlinked.

All apart from the Rita Ora article feature the model on the right however from looking at the previous articles

C13. Music Magazine: Contents Page Outcome referred back to Research

Initial Magazine Research

The intial magazine research led me to many conclusions. Country Weekly gave me the idea for the pose of model with the guitar as can be seen in the process. I found evidence supporting my decision to include the page number as well. The writing of both the examples I researched gave me evidence to believe that having a bolder title to the page information is a good idea ans that the page number and title should also be a different colour and font. The Country weekly example also gave me the idea to display the name of the model featuring on the contents page, this was backed up by the other example. My contents title was also heavily based on the one displayed in Country Weekly.

More Magazine Research

This research reaffirmed my ideas for the style of presentation for the main text, The Kayne article also showed the title could be a design feature and have just as much as weight as a photograph. This article also had evidence of smaller less important text at the very bottom which I went on to utilise. 

Specific Magazine Research

The specific research mostly affirmed ideas such as the page number, having a bolder title to the page information. From the kerrang article I was able to get evidence that a horizontal instead of vertical strip was still appropriate, I also saw that the title was used to break up the sheer difference between the two halves which I have also made use of. 

Drawings 

This drawing gave me the basic structure for my contents page, the green horizontal colour covering the bottom third of the page which was spilt into three by the columns it contained. 

C12. Music Magazine: Contents Page Final

C11. Music Magazine: Contents Page Construction Concept 3

I tried out just having the green sector with one image and I believe it works better this way.

I tried out moving the green sector and I think it works better floated on the page.

Having the green floated looked better, so I made sure that the writing was floated as well so that I stayed within the design rules. 

I chose to switch the colours of the features and their descriptions and i think this way the features stand out more and the eyes is drawn to them over the smaller pieces of information underneath.

I had previously liked the idea of more than one image in the contents page, so I decided to add in a guitar to see how it looked however I do not think it suits the page very well.

I chose to make the green bar transparent so that the nature behind it was more incorporated. This is a very strong transparency, it may be too strong for the green to still be effective.

This is the final level of transparency which I believe is a balance between the colour and the level of transparency.

I chose to add more details underneath the heading as i had seen this in my country weekly research.

In aligned the new information under the heading correctly so that it is within the green bar and is in  more suitable place.

I decided to add in job titles and the people within those positions at the bottom of my green bar of writing as I have seen this in other magazines in the past and I have come across it in my research as well

After looking back at my research, I realized that the features where far more spread out through a magazine so to do this I needed to spread out my page numbers further, by looking at research I altered my numbers, as a magazine would not just have 30 or so pages in it.

This is it with new improved numbers.

This is another draft. 

After this draft, I tried out the last and my favourite sketch where the green segement was running horizontally. 

 When I moved the faded green block to cover the lowest horizontal third, I need to replace the employees block so I decieded to place it horizontally along the bottom of the page as I had seen this in magazines previously.

Having the information in two columns does not work well when there is a third to the right of this empty so i needed to fulfill the rule of thirds. To do so I decided to create another column so that I had a third column therefore three sections which meets with the rule of thirds. I also moved the green section so that it obeyed the rule of thirds and the top of it marked the top of the lowest horizontal third. The contents page title did not suit being above the third so I moved it down so that the green sector bisected it and it lay across the third split.

My contents page needed some more detail in the top left hand corner as this was space which lacked in interest. So corresponding to other magazines I have seen previously I attempted to add in a picture of my front cover on to my contents page with labels for the page numbers of the features on the front.

I also tried to create three equal columns of features on this page so that it was symmetrical and fitted in with the rule of thirds.

I don’t think the front cover goes well here as it is too similar to the backgorund so the additional floating model looks odd. I will remove this idea and continue to manipulate my design.

 I wanted to add the initials of the model on this page in so that the image had more significance than it had previously.

I now tried to position the initials appropriately.

I wanted to add more interest into my contents page, so I considered keeping some element of the front cover such as the pink of the title or the actual title.

I then deceided that I wanted to keep the intials, below is an example of developing the intials whilst keeping the pink of the front. At this point, I also made the decision to flip the photograph as I believed that having interest in the top left hand corner where the reader looks first would be asthetically pleasing.

Below is evidence of manipulating the colour and location of the intials to get a better finsihed effect.

I finally placed the intials in a loctaion that I liked however I now found that the title of contents no longer worked, so I removed it however I still think I need a title.

I made the title bigger and central but I still didn't think it worked so I carried on with title manipulation.

Until I settled on the final one, after this I removed the white strip and replaced with a small white line under the floating initials as I felt the strip was too strong but the underline was subtle yet strong enough to give the initials meaning.