Final Interview page

I re-created my interview page which although I was originally very proud of for the quality on publisher I was disappointed either way and began to rethink my ideas. By doing this I started thinking of and re-writing up a new interview for the magazine, as the other had been very boxy, and too much to take in, so I felt the need to make it smaller, shorter and sweeter, and a lot more reader friendly in order to keep their attention there whilst making it catchy and a lot more casual so that the reader is obviously reading something like this on the way home or during their free time and the purpose of the magazine is to give news on entertainment, entertain and to keep the reader wanting more, from this spreadpage I was quite lost at what to do, and then whilst getting dressed, I had a shirt in which there was onomatopaiea art (such as "Pow", "Bam", "Zooom" etc.) And it occured to me, that I wanted to give a more personal approach with my magazine alongwith whoever I had interviewed and inspiring the idea for poloaroid photos, which were captioned by using quote from the interview so therefore co-ordinating with the photos within the polaroid style image and acting as both captions and pull quotes. I also used a spraypaint effect which had music is my language as text within it, which helped me title the interview "music is my language". The splats in corner are used to symbolise the creativity, and the mix of colours is similar to the mix's of the DJ's. His pose is as such so that he's looking at the music is my language stamp, his ipod and pointing towards the splats. Another reason for the onomatopaeia is the resemblence of his youth. Here it is:

Final Contents page

After a lot of trial and error, and having a look at magazines, I ended up doing something conventional, since I didnt see the point in challenging the convention for the contents page, as it was meant to be one which was detailed and caught the readers eye for what elses included inside, which is not mentioned on the front page. After looking at t a RWD magazine, I saw their contents page and really enjoyed the feel of it, as I myself just based on the photos decided to actually use their layout, while added a few extras which I though were quite interesting, Heres the contents page:

Front cover final

After making re-arrangement and looking for the faults on my previous front cover I felt the need to completely re-do it, here it is:

Also by the time I had finished this, I felt the need to re-do the rest too, which meant that I had to have another photoshoot, due to the terrible quality of the previous boy model, but I still wanted to make use of the album cover for the contents page, so that was kept.

Masthead design

This was the design I used as my masthead for my refurbished magazine which I complied on photoshop, learning techniques and obtaining ideas from using tutorials in which I self tutored myself to be able to use photoshop. The reason behind the mastheads "cracks" within the word 'RAVE!' is due to the fact that in raves or in house party's things do get damaged pretty much and those cracks represent a night to remember, and in this particular case an issue to remember.

Photoshoot, 3rd one

I realised that I definately needed a few more things to be done with my magazine, one of which was to actually re-do a photoshooot, this time paying more attention to the clothing, mis-en-scene. The photos I selected were:

Interview spread draft/layout self criticism

Heres the interview spread for the magazine:

Well out of the three, I felt that the interview spread was my personal favourite and probably the best of page of them all. Reasons being that I managed to use the pictures to create a flow of text which allowed me to give a great effect which made the reader, read from left to right and drew them in. But also at the same time, the quality could have been a lot of better and the text URGENTLY needs to be purged and embedded into the page to make it shorter, because right now it is pretty much just a bunch of text, and i believe that I could express this better and also improving the way its presented showing the capabilities of the language used and more entertaining plus a lot more reader-friendly and gripping.

Contents draft/layout self-criticsm

Heres the contents:

Now after looking at this.. I felt that I could obviously change out and change up the layout a lot more. Such as moving the editors letter to the left hand side of the page since in actual fact people in general tend to read from left to right and move the main image to the right so that it is structured in a way that the more important topics within the page are acknowledged and noticed earlier so that the reader can think of what appeals to them within the magazine.

Front cover draft/layout self critique

after coming across some ideas, due to lack of time and being unable to learn photoshop well enough in order to reach better quality for the magazine, and pretty much just grabbing a lot of ideas I already had and bringing them together in order to create something rather different and at the time considering the amount of preparation taken for this magazine, it was.. just about passable, but not even close to what I thought I was capable, but on the bright side of things I realised how.. mediocre it was within itself to the point where at the end after thinking about it I was disappointed a lot in myself with what it was, although even after recieving some positive feedback about the positioning of the pictures and text on the interview page, and some of the initial ideas for the front cover. The contents was very conventional, which I didnt like, bugged me quite a bit, coming to the conclusion I NEEDED another model in order to re-do the interview pages and probably add a few more things to the contents in order to reach some ideas I had gained from looking at a kerrang magazine, which had also inspired the last minute masthead which I wish to keep, anyway enough sidetracking on the layouts for the magazine here the first drafts are:

The front cover, the only few points of this I found that I actually personally enjoyed to like and found pleasing towards my eye and others who had a look at it. But the one thing that everyone had to say, and I had agreed with totally, was infact the colours I used, Blue and Orange.. Now blue I understood slightly why people may have understood it to be such as "unfriendliness". On the other hand, the orange complimented the blue and gave the image that orange was somewhat to do with fun, which is a primary element within a party, since when you go to a party you obviously intend to go and have fun, otherwise there's no point going at all if you wish to just sit in the corner and watch and neither socialise realistically. Plus there was no issue date e.g. February 2010 or price for the magazine.

the blueprint for frontpage, contents + interview

These were the important ideas i felt that had to be connoted from the magazine within itself in order to access and catch the readers eye and draw them in by looking at the front page, and these elements to be spread out within or throughout the pages:

Researching slogan for magazine

Now as quite a few magazines such as Kerrang! have their own slogans, I personally felt that a slogan was quite important and defined the magazine and its contents a lot more than who or what artist/band was within the magazine. And above that, the majority of the time the slogans are not included among the front page of the magazine, hence I want to be a bit more unconventional and include it over the front page. Now, I had to relate this to the title of my magazine and the genres which it is based upon. I chose to use "Cause We Like To Party All The Time" purely since it worked well with the name of the magazine "Rave" seeing as Rave is a party, and the magazine is pretty much a regular on clubs plus music which works with it, hence leaving me with that as the slogan.

Naming the magazine

Well originally as I had come to terms with changing the genre to dubstep, drum & bass etc.. I realised that all these genres went quite hand it hand with a lot of others.. and made me think.. it's all the same in a way but only specific sub-genres can be related to my primary genres, Dubstep and Drum & Bass which go hand in hand anyway. This led to my conclusion of expanding the genres of my magazine once again but only to a point where it simply touches the elements which are related to my genres, nothing else. So i began with thoughts on the idea of the genres which contains the elements of more mainstream genres such as: Dubstep, Drum & Bass, Bassline, Funkyhouse, Grime, Jungle, Garage, Dance, Electro, Dancehall, Reggae, Alternative Hip Hop and Alternative Rock. Now when originally deciding a genre I wished to base the magazine upon, I had thought of it simply as.. what links all of these genres together, Coming up with the plan of devising what they as a whole connoted. I ended up unable to think of a link between them straight away, BUT! thanks to a Rave I went to, I just thought.. that they all came together at one particular event as mash-ups or remixes and the original music leaving it at the conclusion, I was going to title it "RAVE!".

Contents pages

From looking at the contents page from mixmag, I recall seeing a box at the bottom featuring a free cd related to the music which was within the magazine, which made me look at it and think a bit and even got me quite interested in just the contents and above all of this, it wasn't common within many magazines to have that type of review at the bottom of the contents page.. So i got together a photo of my model(see below)

the model before

I made some edits to this and turned it into one new photo..


ALTHOUGH, i'd like to add this photo was originally as part of me learning photoshop but whilst I was doing this I was also uploadingthe contents page research at the time.. and add 1 and 1 together.. we have a new addition towards the magazine.

contents page moodboard

I had a look at some other contents pages for peace of mind that I wasnt relying totally on the mixmag and Q contents pages. From these I got a few more ideas for my contents page, and allowed me to try mix it up a little when it came to my contents page.

Interview Research

After looking through some magazines in a lesson, we were assigned to choose an interview of our choice and have a look, and learn and see conventions of interviews within magazines. I chose an interview of Kate Nash, and depicted that I had to first understand the introductory photo to the magazine, by looking and seeing how the masthead for the interview connoted and denoted what was part of the mis-en-scene and how it may have related to the artist in particular.


Now from this I learnt that interviews had to be structured as either embedded or simple Q&A, both would work BUT varied depended on the TA(target audience) who I'm trying to reach out to, which is 18-25 year olds(my reader profile has yet to be uploaded). As the interview was embedded, and my interview which i had taken was in a Q&A format, but had a lot of potential in my opinion to be embedded and turnt into one which reached the standards of language for such an age group, but also being able to reach out to them in a casual tone. For now, i'm leaving my interview un-embedded so that I can simply turn this version of my magazine into a draft, and get a better insight on how I should structure the magazine.

Genre research

We had a lesson which helped us understand the necessity and how relevant the mis-en-scene, meaning clothes in specific were important to the genre which was attempted to be represented, heres the original photo, and then a photoshopped version with implications of rap music.