Front Cover De-Construction

This is my de-construction of the Rollling Stone Magazine, Britney Spears front cover

Front Cover Deconstructions

One of the front covers I deconstructed was of the Q music magazine, April 2009 front cover of Lily Allen. One of the reasons I chose this specific front cover is because of the sybolism behind the image. The use of panthers, dressign Lily all Black, with her back showing all releates to sensuality and animals, and purposely displays Lily as a sexy, animalistic character. I liked the way she was shown to be characterised differently, and wanted to use the idea of doing something symbolic with my model. I also like the structural arrangement of the front cover; the way the title was placed across the image, the placement of text in the two top corners and bottom of the magazine, giving the front cover a well structured and appealing look.

The typography was also very impressive, the variety between font sizes, and bold, italics, ect. This variety was even included in blocks of text, and the mixture genuinely looked very appealing overall. I felt that if I could find a way of varying my fonts in a way that looked good, similarly to this, then I would try to do so.

The colour coding in this specific front cover was very appealing, the mixture of black, blue, white and red mixed together really well, without looking over complicated, and instead look artistic and interesting. These coloured fonts mixed in with the sexy image of Lily Allen connected togther to make the front cover appealing to the specific target audiece of youngish male men. I wanted to use style these features in my magazine to attract my target audience.

The other front cover I deconstructed was of the Rolling Stone music magazine, with Britney Spears on the front cover. The reason I chose this particular front cover is because I like the black and white, close up image. It was of Britney back in her early days as a popstar, and this edition of the magazine was published shortly after Britneys public breakdown. The symbolism behind the image gave the front cover more of an edge, and made it more appealing.

The fonts were all the same, and either yellow, white or black, which made an attractive colour scheme that could appeal to both genders, which suited the magazine which aims to appeal to both genders.

Magazine Conventions- Double Page Spread

When doing my magazine deconstructing I noticed that the layout was typically, one large picture and a title on one page, with text on the opposite page, or a large picture spread across the two pages with little text. I decided to use a layout with one large picture and title on one side, and a few smaller pictures and a lot of text for the interview on the opposite page. So my magazine shows typical conventions in the layout, but unlike most music magazines, I'm including a variety of other pictures of the music artist; in order to show the variety in the pictures I took, as well as making the page with the text on it more interesting. Which ventures outside of the typical music magazine conventions, giving it an individual twist. I still used conventions such as putting page numbers, the date and magazine title as a footer at the bottom of the page. A lot of interviews in music magazines, highlighted a specific quote from the text, and placed in the middle of the interview, using a larger and bolder font. This way people were given an insight into what topics the interview covered. I included this convention in my double page spread, as I thought it was a good feature to use, and made the page look more professional and realistic.

Contents Page- Conventions

My magazine follows a lot of typical conventions in the contents page by; keeping the magazine title present on the page, using pictures of the artist featured on the front cover, using other pictures of features in the magazine, using listing to display the text, making page number references and writing the date. All of these conventions are taken from my magazine deconstruction, which allowed me to see how there are shared features in magazines to make things easier for the readers understanding. My contents page doesn't really stray from any typical conventions of music magazines contents pages, besides using two different list of text to direct the reader to the different features, which is rarely done.
I used the same fonts on my contents as I did on the front cover, this is another typical conventions of modern day music magazines; it helps to keep a simplicity to the overall product, and makes the connection with the front cover, that they're both from the same magazine. My contents page uses a simple colour scheme, which is also done conventionally in most music magazines, this avoids over complicating it, and making it more aesthetically appealing to the target audience. I used colours that would appeal to my target audience (teenage girls), as most other magazines do.

This analysis of a Q contents page made me familiar with typical conventions, and I wanted to convey some of these conventions in my own contents page.

Conventions- Front page

My magazine reflects coventions of real music magazines, some of which was inspired from research I did into modern day music magazines, such as Q and NME. by deconstructing various front covers, contents pages and double page spreads, I was able to extract specific ideas that would help me to thinks of suitable story features for my magazine, as well as using parts of the design as inspiration for my magazines layout.
A lot of the deconstruction enabled me to understand how representations of musicians can use symbolism that makes the picture more interesting, and in turn makes the front cover more appealing. Also, the artistic imagery, mixed with simplistic text colour coding and only necessary, informative writing helped me to understand how to layout a front cover, and what to write on it. The Lily Allen front cover uses conventional features of music magazines; the reference to specific musicians who feature inside the magazine, the magazines title, mentions of features inside the magazine, a bar code and one large image. I use all of these conventions on my magazine front cover, in order to help it be easily recognised as a music magazine.

My front cover doesn't step out of the stereotypical music magazine conventions, the fonts I used for it are slightly offbeat in comparison to the types of classic fonts most magazines would use, such as Q and NME, where the fonts aren't as decorative and are more simplistic. The fonts I used however vary between being simplistic, and slightly more decorative; I did this simply to make the front cover more aesthetically interesting and unique. I used typical conventions such as a masthead, images of featuring artists, and text explaining what was featuring inside of the magazine. This was necessary in creating a realistic front cover, which would attract my audience.

Introduction

This blog is being used as a part of my media AS coursework; I've been creating a music magazine using both Photoshop and InDesign, and need to of created a front cover, contents page, and double page spread by the end of the project. I'll be using this blog as an on going way to evaluate my work.