When designing my magazine, I needed a basis to imitate and develop ideas from. I believed that if I followed the general style of one magazine along with its basic conventions, then I would be guaranteed success. I used Q magazine as I thought that it's a very professional and well-respected magazine that included everything that I hoped to include in my magazine and I also think that the house style appeals very well to my audience.
The cover image of my magazine generally fits within the usual images that Q magazine uses - a close up image of the artist giving direct eye contact to the audience. This attracts the audience as it appeals to all different social types and lures them into purchasing the magazine as it grabs all of their attention. Q successfully uses this technique therefore I felt it was quite mandatory to use as it is a general magazine convention.
As you can see, I have pretty much used the same colour scheme of red, black and white. The masthead however, is very different as I chose not to use a logo and just stuck with the simple word stretched across the main image; I chose not to go for the 'red box logo' as it's famously associated with Q magazine and I wanted to create my own feature that stood out and was easily associated with the magazine. I can use this masthead on any cover with any photo and it would still look realistic and professional. Red tends to compliment most colours so having it permanently in the house style makes the magazine is consistent and well-known.
Another thing that I liked about the Q cover was the band listing. I have chosen to stick to my colour scheme and use a chunky, bold font in a column which is placed on the left hand side of the magazine. This stands out amongst the rest of the cover as the black contrasts with the models skin tone as it sits on top of her. I like the fact that bands are artists are featured in not only my cover but the Q covers because it allows the audience to know which artists are going to be in the magazine that month, and immediately attracts fans instantly instead of them having to guess or open the magazine to find out. I also featured red lines under each artist just to symbolise each and make them stand out more. Including this feature was a quick way to make my magazine appear different and effective as it's not a consistent feature in Q however I would continue to use it.
It was inevitable that I would put the main story head-line in big, bold writing which was almost centred on top of the image alike Q magazine. I chose to focus mine a bit more on the right as the image is less busy and dark around this area therefore using a pop of white would make the headline stand out even more. I looked at various different magazines of all different genres, price and regularity and found a consistent pattern with the main story headlines positioning on the front cover. I think the magazine would look very bare and boring without the main headline appearing larger than the rest of text; it wouldn't look complete. Similar to Q, I featured the artists name in larger text of a different colour to draw immediate attention to it. Her name is also featured in a different font to the rest of the text to grab attention even more so.
For my special edition magazine, I included another feature from the Q cover that I was attracted to which was the use of using a bold image in front of text behind the artist which illustrated her thoughts and quotes from the interview inside the magazine. I thought that this could be one of my unique selling points and immediately created the cover. I followed the colour scheme of lots of whites, blacks and reds and used a unique image which portrayed the artist screaming and sticking out her tongue - indicating her controversial manner which reflects on the genre of the magazine and the audience. I didn't feature any headlines on this cover apart from the main headline which was about my artist. I added a small play on words for this headline to portray that it's not too formal or serious. Underneath this headline, I included a silver bar which indicated how the magazine was a fan/subscriber edition, just like Q magazine did in one of their special edition magazines. I felt that making another cover would make my magazine extremely unique and appealing towards the audience.
The contents page included all of the conventions of a magazine such as the regulars, features and reviews. I included plenty of images in my contents page to make it look more interesting as most contents pages look quite tedious and actually disinterest the reader into looking at them. I chose against including an editors note as I wanted as little bulk amounts of text as possible - I wanted most of my text to be in the article. I did include a social networking area next to the issue number as I want the magazine to interact with it's readers very regularly, which fits well within their interests and the personal relationships of the uses and gratifications theory. I feel that my contents page included all conventions of a magazine well as it mimics Q magazine effectively to make it look like a realistic magazine on the shelves by using various features that they do.
My article features many conventions of a magazine such as the big, bold single photos right to the gigantic size of the first letter in the article. By making small adjustments I am able to make my magazine look more realistic and professional and most importantly appeal to the audience more. I chose images in this article that stood out well and represented the type of language that was included inside it; for example taboo language paired with a quite explicit image of the artist with her middle finger up which portrays that she's quite careless. I used 3 columns for the articles layout as it makes the magazine easier to read whilst giving it a professional look overall. As well as this, I used pull out quotes which attract the reader before they even read the article so it gives them a glimpse of what to expect inside. Using these conventions simply and easily allowed my magazine to look more effective.
Overall, by basing my magazine on an existing magazine and using its main codes and conventions, I felt that it has increased the general standard of my magazine and how professional it looks and appears. It also allows me to have the change of seeing what my target audience readers are into and how they like their information and news laid out on the page - overall enabling me to make my magazine to the best of my standards.
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