Adding tattoo tutorial

Because tattoos are part of rock iconography, I thought it would be useful to know how to add them onto people in PhotoShop.  This would help in the representation of my audience through the magazine and make it possibly more sellable to my target audience.

Mock up improvements

I've made the improvement I mentioned when I first posted about this mock-up.  I do think it looks better with a variety of fonts and my sell lines are much improved.  I've also added the Gossip band logo because before, you couldn't tell that I meant a band, instead of just the word 'gossip'.  

Hair/make-up PhotoShop practise

 



Before and after

This is one of the looks I might apply to my model
Of course, I could apply the make-up in real life, but it's good to practise just in case I want to make any changes post-photoshoot

Changing hair colour tutorial

 


Because I want the person in my picture to have a non-natural hair colour, and none of my possible models do, I will need to achieve the effect on PhotoShop instead. These tutorials were quite useful so I'll use them when I need to.  Some of my potential models have darker hair, so if I use those for my pictures, then I'll have to lighten the hair colour before I affectively 'colour' it, which is why I've found a tutorial for lightening the hair as well.

Colour Scheme

After creating my first mockup, I've decided that I'm going to take my first set of images around the colour scheme of black, pink and purple.

 This is not he standard issue black red and yellow colour scheme that is normally expected on the front of a rock magazine and this is precisely the reason I like it. Firstly, it gives the magazine an edge; soemething that makes it stand out from the rest.  I considered the fact that the colour scheme might not appeal to some of the male and possibly female population.  This is a second reason as to why I like the concept of a stereotypical 'feminine' colour scheme
  As I've already discussed, a key concept of rock music is rebelling against the norm and "stickin' it to the man". Crossing the boundaries of gender norms is not at all a new concept in rock music.

pink in a rock band's logo

punk girls often dressed
the same as guys

glam rock was a phase when men in
makeup was the fashion

Bowie helped to bring  being androgynous
into fashion

However, I would be further pushing those boudaries by expanding this ideology to a form of media where it is quite unseen.  Therefore, by using feminine colours in such a context, my magazine is appealing to those with true rock and roll attitude, which will maintain the authenticity of my readership.

However, I will ensure that my genre is clearly represented in other forms of media language; rock iconography, fonts, written language etc. This will aid the juxtaposition of the rock magazine conventions and the slightly contemporary ideology. But most importantly, this will help my target audience to be represented by the magazine and help them to identify the product that they desire.

First Mock Up

I started with just a main image which I took from google and added my masthead and my skyline (kicker).  I chose this particular image because it's quite similar to the ideas I had in mind for a main image.   I also like how the colours work together which makes it quite easy to work around in regards to colour scheme; as I was having a bit of difficulty choosing one.  My tutor said that sometime magazines choose a colour scheme around the person in the main image.  This was also something that I looked at in the prelim task of the college magazine.  So I thought it might be best to decide on the colour scheme this way instead of predeciding it. 

The girl in the picture is a singer from Paramore, a band which fits well into my genre.  I fit my masthead around this so that her head wasn't slightly cropped by it.  The use of a stand-out font for the name of the band helps to appeal to the audience and reinforce the band's unique style.  Everything is in capital letters to make it all look loud, and to make everything work together (as I discovered that I just didn't like the look of mixing lower case and upper case letters)

I added a few sell lines, making some of them vague and adding a bit of extra info on some, as this will attract my target audience.

I decided on a plug which matches my colour scheme.  The logo for the Leeds and Reading Festival stands out which attracts the audience's attention; the purpose of the plug.

Finally I added a strip of contents teasers at the bottom of the page, a barcode, and a price and issue number.

Overall I'm pretty happy with my first mockup.  I feel as though it looks like it could be a real magazine, as the fonts, layout, use of colour scheme, etc match conventions.

Conventions that I've broken include;  - Colour theme, as this particular one isn't used on a rock magazine very often
-  Use of a long shot, however I think it works in this instance so I will take some long shots for my drafts.

Slight gripes are;  I feel like the masthead might be a bit too big and dominating.
Some of my sell lines are a bit long
The plug would look better if it wasn't over the masthead
I need to take some of my own images, however this is not a draft it's a mock up/practise.
The issue number and price should be near the barcode
If I move the issue number and price, I can put the kicker below the masthead and it will look less crowded.
Although I like the consistent fonts, I will have to experiment with using more varied font styles.

Designing my masthead

Here I was trying out different fonts and started to experiment some ideas on my favourite one.  I've done this to make the masthead look a bit like a guitar tab which will help to represent my magazine as a rock magazine.  However I didn't really like the red dots as I thought it started to look a bit too busy and to me, is reminiscent of 1950's cartoon style lettering; the kind of design that might go on the front of a 1950's modern art cartoon strip...

see the way the colours over lap
the same way the red dots do on my design...

i couldn't find any really relevant examples
 but this is the style i mean...

you get the idea.  (I hope???)

So in the end I stuck to a more simple design that still emulates rock music as it looks like the letters are placed over the strings of a guitar.  

The font is bold and blocky like others that I've seen on the front of existing magazines.  

I've also chosen to use capital letters to make the title look 'loud'; relating to rock music once again. 

I may develop the design further if I'm inspired by anything.  For now though, I'm happy to use this design for when I start my drafts very shortly.  If I like the look of the design on my first few drafts, then I'll keep it like this.  I think it's pretty effective because it's bold, easy to look at, and represents rock style fairly well; pretty much all the things a masthead need do.