This is the original photo of Milo Snow before I put the on bitmap or photoshopped it at all.

Deconstruction of final front cover.

When constructing my front cover,  I thought what could make this magazine stand out from the rest? The Front cover is the magazines biggest advertisement. I created a big red box on photoshop and put text on top of it, to create the "Unsung" logo. I chose red because it stands out and contrasts against my black and white photograph of Milo Snow. 

When researching i had decided to make my magazine a cheap weekly magazine at only 50p, which is roughly the same price as a daily Newspaper. The way i was going to make my magazine so affordable was to cut back on printing costs and use Newspaper paper instead of the glossy polished magazine paper. To create this effect on photoshop i converted my photograph i had taken of Milo into Grayscale and put on a mode called Bitmap. This gave the effect that it had been printed using a cheap printing method, like a newspaper. Another way i set out to create this cheap paper effect was to put a picture parchment underneath my photograph and "overlay" the two. This gives the effect of the paper being slightly crinkled and worn. 

I used a three colour palette of  red, black and white. With only a splash of yellow for my price sign. Most magazines work on a three couloured palette, i kept my colours very minimal with the majority of my front cover being black and white, but used bright colours to highlight the price, the logo and the main feature.

The most conventional front covers of magazines will be packed with sell lines and goodies convincing you to pick it up and purchase it . When deciding what mine was going to look like i decided to have no sell lines apart from the main feature "Milo". I had a couple of reasons for deciding to do this. The first one was that all the focus would be on Milo Snow, I wanted this because Milo was the exact sort of acts i wanted in Unsung. The second reason was it makes the magazine look more classy and smart which would make up for the paper quality.

I used six different fonts in this front cover, although that was more than i had planned, I'm happy the way it looked in the end. For the logo i chose a very plain and bold font, to make it stand out. For the price sign i found a font on dafont.com again its bold and looks almost faded which i really liked because it went with the theme of the magazine. For the sell line about the main feature i used a western style font, i did this because it is different and not what you might expect which is what Milo Snow is all about.

Although it is not the most conventional looking magazine i was very happy with the way it turned out and i fell like it does look professional and realistic.

Where do you hear about upcoming gigs?

The results to this question were also very shocking. Almost no one in my sample goes to a magazine in search for a gig. I had always wanted to do gig listings in my magazine but after seeing these results I really wanted to try and encourage people to look for gigs in the music magazines. This was also another factor of changing my magazine from monthly to weekly, if I were to do gig listings in monthly magazines their validity would soon run out, unlike a weekly one which could be updated regally.

How much wold you be willing to spend on a Monthly magazine?

At first i was planning on making a monthly music magazine but i then changed my mind when studying my questionnaire. The results show that people are reluctant to spend more than £2 on a magazine. This made me decide to completely change my idea around. It seemed a good idea to make a weekly magazine that was low in price, cutting back on things like paper quality. My target audience is 16 to 24 year olds who perhaps would not be willing to splash out on a weekly magazine. I was going to make my magazine 50p, the same price of a down market newspaper.

What genre of music would you most like to see in a music magazine?

The Majority of my sample said they would like to see a mixture of genres in a magazine. So when constructing my contents page, i was sure to include as many different genres of music as possible.

How often do you read music magazines?

After plotting the results of this question i found that are a hugely bigger percentage of men than women who read music magazines. I started to think of ways i could encourage women to read my magazine. I chose to put an attractive man on the front to try and encourage women to buy my product.

Questionnaire

I have made a questionnaire on Word about Unsung, my main reason for doing this is to get a feel and some ideas of what people look for in magazines. I gave out my questionnaire to 15 different people both boys and girls, they were all aged roughly from 16 to 24 (my target audience). I got some quite interesting results from my questionnaires, so decided to make graphs of the results to some of the questions. I took the percentages of all the results and made the charts on excel. By doing this my results were clear and this really set me to know what to do for my final construction of my magazine.

Sketch Of Front Cover

This is my first sketch of what I would like my magazine front cover to look like. I wanted it to look not to over photoshoped and quite minimal. I was following the most conventional magazine layout, with one medium close up of a face, and the title of the magazine at the top. I didn’t want to many sell lines and wanted to use a three-colour palette.

After looking at NME, I really wanted to create a magazine which focused on unsigned bands or rising bands. I wanted these sort of acts for a couple of reasons, after looking around in the shops and researching the current magazines for sale and looking at the results from my questionnaires, I found that the only way people really find unsigned music is through social networking sights. so there is definitely a space for this sort of music magazine in the market.

Now i know what sort of magazine I want, what do I put in it? Well obviously unheard bands but also gig listings, ratings of new albums, advice on how to get your music heard and many more. I brainstormed about what my magazine was going to contain. By doing that I came across my main feature idea. A friend of mine had recently left a band and was starting up a new solo career that was looking very promising for him. This was exactly the kind of acts I wanted to be in Unsung and so got in contact with him straight away.

evaluation of NME music magazine

The most eye catching thing on the front cover is the main title and the logo of the magazine. It immediately catches the reader’s eye, and as NME is a widely known magazine the readers become interested. The only photograph takes up the whole front cover and has a bright mustard yellow background. The magazine uses a three colour palette, red yellow and white. The main feature is Pete Doherty, his name and face is the biggest thing on the magazine. Apart from the NME logo, the thing that sells the magazine is the face of the front cover, they are always famous with an interesting sell lines. For example all the typical NME readers would have heard Pete Doherty’s music, so therefore would be curious to learn and hear about what new sound Pete may be producing when the saw a quote from him saying, “It’s completely different to anything else I have done”.
There a lot of well known band names which are all slightly different types of music shown on the front cover which is done to attract every possible potential reader.
After looking at NME which is a widely known and popular music magazine, I started to look I at how I could make my own magazine and I decided to go in the opposite direction. I decided to study and concentrate on the same sort and genres of music as NME but on a different level, I wanted to find out about acts and bands before they were signed, still following the basic ideas and style of NME.