Front cover, contents and DPS flat plans with written rationale

The colours that I am going to use on the front cover I will use throughout my magazine and the reason for this is because I would like to have the colour scheme consistent throughout my magazine. The colours that I am going to use are: red, white and black and the reason why I am going to pick these three colours is because this is the conventional amount and in my opinion any more would look too over powering. The connotations the colour scheme will create will possibly be a popular magazine as many other popular magazine use this colour scheme. The colours will contrast on the masthead, main image and the text used on the front page.

I will be using one image on the front page as I feel that any more would not look as professional. The type of mise en scene that I will use on the front cover will be someone sitting down on a chair, there will be watermark effect on the screen to make it look as though it is raining, red lipstick, studio setting and long shot distance. The image connotation from this would be a strong woman coming through the worst of it and it looks to be that she is still not through the worst of it (represented by the rain).

The text will have an informal style as it will be an interview with a celebrity so you wouldn’t want to have it too informal or too formal either as you want them to be relaxed as well as your audience.

The type of text font that I am planning to use for my magazine will be quite plain and simple and this will be for my reader to understand easily. The font will frame the image and I will try and not have any of the text overlapping the image as I would like the readers to be able to clearly see the images and text. For my magazine I would like to have an equal amount of text and images as I would not like to put people off who like looking at the images by putting lots of text and vice versa. However I am not going to be using a lot of images as I feel this brings down the professional finish of a magazine however I am going to arrange the text so it looks equal. For my text I am planning on using a drop-cap for the beginning of my article so that it will not only show the reader where the article starts on the page but also to entice the reader into reading the article. 

I am going to use the same colour on the contents page as I used on the front page and the reason for this is because I would like to use the same colour scheme throughout my magazine and the colours I am planning on using is: red, white and black.

I am going to use three images on my contents page and the reason for this is that when researching on different music magazines on my genre I noticed that magazine that used more than three images on their contents page made the magazine look unprofessional and some magazines only had one image on the contents page and this also made the magazine look unprofessional and it also made the person who made the magazine look as though they didn’t really care about it and that they never put any effect in. For the images on the contents page I am going to use 3 images, the main image I am going to have a person standing in a minimalist setting so that the background doesn’t distract from the person in the image and this will be a long shot.

The style of text I am going to use for the contents page is going to be informal and quite minimal as I want the text to be short and sweet so that it will grab the reader’s attention in a short space of time and this would not be possible if the text I place on the contents page is an essay long. I am planning on using teasers to make the reader want to read the articles in the magazine.

For the font I am planning on using plain and simple and I am going to use the layout of the contents page to show the different articles instead of using different text as I would like that to be something that will entice the reader on the double page spread.

As I said before I am going to use the same colours throughout my magazine as this will make the magazine look more professional and it will show that I took time and consideration to choose my colour scheme – red, white and black. The reason why I have chosen these colours is because this colour scheme is quite popular with this genre and so I am going to keep into the conventions.

I am going to use a similar image for the image on the double page spread as I used for the front cover and the reason why I have done this is so that the readers can distinguish that the image on the front of the magazine is for the article on the double page spread. For this image I will try and create the same connotations, setting and I am not going to use the same body position and texture as I think that this will make the magazine look unprofessional and I think it will make the magazine look rushed and that I haven’t took much time on the images and that I have just copied the image from the front page to the double page spread. For the images I am going to use, relevant images so that the images will relate to the text of the article. In the article I will be describing how much hard ship this person has been through. I will also try to teasers for possible new releases/boyfriend/collaborations/imagery/sell-lines/masthead, which will hopefully engage the reader to read the full article.

For the text I am going to use drop-caps to show the reader where the article starts and it will hopefully entice people into reading the article as this convention will help entice the reader. I am going to tease the reader by using quotes (in bigger text than the articles text) in between the article paragraph so that the audience will read them quotes and then, will hopefully want to know why the person in the article has said this, and make them want to read an article. For the text I am planning on using plain and simple however I will be using different styles of simple text to show the reader the different conventions for example the pull-quotes and the actual article. For the text on the double page spread I would like some of the format to be different to keep the reader engaged however I am not going to change it dramatically as I would like to keep the main style of the magazine to be the same throughout. I will frame the text around the images.