Magazine Front Cover, Contents Page, and Double-page Spread Mock-ups

The mock-ups above are a rough idea of what the final draft of my magazine will look like. However, some of the cover lines, names of articles, titles, positioning of elements, etc, may change to make the final draft of my magazine perfect when I actually start designing it on Adobe Photoshop. 

In the end, I decided to select a Serif 'old school' font style for my masthead on the front cover of the magazine because I think the lines on the font make it stand out better than a Sans Serif font, as the means of a masthead is to attract consumers' attention. 

The image of the music artist which I've drawn on the front cover is an idea of the kind of pose I want my model to do when I photograph them. I decided to illustrate it as a mid shot with a close-up because I think it will be an ideal image for the front cover, as most buyers are usually attracted to who's on the front cover of a magazine (the unique selling point) so pay more attention to facial features - especially youth (target audience of 16-28 year olds). In addition, I decided to draw the music artist overlapping the masthead to highlight the importance of the particular music artist being the main feature of the magazine. Overlapping the image of the music artist with the masthead efficiently makes good use of the space as well. 

Moreover, I chose the price of my magazine to be £2.99 because I researched the price of other magazines of a similar genre to what my magazine is going to be focused on and most of them cost $4.99 (such as The Source), which is around £3.00, so I thought £2.99 would be a reasonable price for my magazine. 

I came to the decision of having the contents page in a simple format as existing magazines, which are of a similar genre to what my magazine is going to be focused on, have a simple layout too. I think a simple layout is ideal as it'll be straightforward for readers to follow and they won't be put off by reading the magazine if a page isn't cluttered with lots of information and images, which is the reason why I also decided to only draw one image of the music artist on the contents page of my magazine. Furthermore, I made the decision to depict the music artist in a medium long shot on the contents page because this type of shot will allow the mise-en-scene to be portrayed effectively. 


Also, I chose to have the letter 's' in the word 'contents' as a dollar sign to give the title of the contents page a 'cool' look. The dollar symbol is associated a lot with the R&B/hip-hop genre as it's a multi-billion dollar industry. Therefore, using a dollar sign will reinforce this fact. 


For the double-page spread, I decided to illustrate an enlarged mid shot with a close-up of the music artist on one half of the double-page spread, but slightly overlapping it over onto the left-hand side of the double-page spread so that a link is portrayed between the image and the actual article that focuses on the music artist. To depict this, I chose to position the title in the middle of the double-page as well. Moreover, I made the decision to have the text in just two columns on the left-hand side of the double-page spread, as it will prevent the entire double-page spread from being overcrowded and putting the readers off from reading the article.