Interview Held with my Demographic

I wasn't 100% happy with my first version of my front cover as I didn't think it was looking like it would be a complete-cover for a pop-magazine, in terms of communicating the genre correctly to the target audience. To try and improve my work I took the step of organizing a structured interview with a small focus group of my demographic.

My interview was with Lucia (16), Rosie (17) and Archie (18).

The first question I asked them was:

"Does the magazine Front Cover represent the artist efficiently?

Archie's response was "I would not be able to tell that she is a pop artist from this front cover, I think this is due to the colour scheme being too formal and not bright and fun, which I think pop should be."

Lucia followed with "Yes I agree with Archie, the models dressed in a glittery dress and her facial expression has a lot of attitude to it, therefore I don't think the front covers and colours match the fun and bubbly personality of the model, which is resulting in the model not seeming to fit in on the front cover."

I then asked:

"Does the layout work?"

Rosie replied "The first thing I look at on a front cover is the photo, therefore I believe that there shouldn't be any writing over her hair or face as it takes attention away from the photo, and also results in the front cover looking messy."

Archie said "I think that also the photo itself could be made bigger so that the models head covers more of the masthead as she looks a bit too low down. However I like the central position of the cover star so I wouldn't change that aspect."

The final question I asked was:

"Does the colour-scheme work?"

Lucia said "I believe that the dark red colour makes the magazine look too harsh for the genre, I think that pop should have a softer tone, maybe a pale pink?

Rosie then followed with "I also don't think that the dark colour works well with the models skin tone and outfit colours, I agree with Lucia and think that a softer colour would look better."

Coverline and Plugs First Drafts

After deciding completely on my masthead, my next aim was to choose my coverline and plugs for the front cover. These two are the start of my first drafts where I decided to keep the same colour font as my masthead, but vary the type of font and the sizes, whilst aslo trying to find appropriate places to place them.

Deciding My Masthead Continued

The next thing I had to do, after choosing my font and colour was to decide what effects to put on it. After going through them all I decided the one that I, personally, thought looked best was the drop shadow effect which made the masthead look slightly 3D, therefore standing out more.

Deciding my Masthead

The first thing I wanted to do when starting to create my front cover (after choosing my photo) was to choose an appropriate font and colour for my masthead. As my target audience who answered suggested, my colour scheme for the magazine was red, white and back. Due to my models hair being dark brown/black I knew it would be a bad idea to also have my masthead black as the writing would be unclear. Therefore I decided my two colours to choose from were red and white (as shown above.) Eventually I decided on the red as I believed it portrayed the genre of a music magazine more, whereas I found the white, with red background, gave the impression that the magazine would be a gossip magazine. However I decided on a slightly darker red than I'd originally planned (original colour is the background of the white masthead) and the reasoning behind this was because it then matched the lipstick of my model which portrays that she is a part of my magazine.