creating my own billboard magazine

I created this front over for Billboard to show my understanding so far about the codes and conventions of music magazines.

I used original photography to get me used to taking photos for my own magazine.Although the quality of the photo would be better for my final design. The cover star is making eye contact with the reader slightly which is a convention of a music magazine, but she is adding personality to it but winking. This shows she has a fun, quirky side and it is important for magazines to portray the artist/bands image right. Also like all the music magazines i have looked at the cover star is dominating the front cover in order to entice the customer to buy this magazine as theoretically the cover star will be someone people are interested in. I didn't consider much mise en scene for this photo, such as clothing and make up, but for my final piece i will make sure the mise en scene adds to the effect i am going for. To go with the cover star image i created a main cover line to go with it too. However my main cover line is not as big as conventional music magazines so for my final piece I will have to ensure I make the font larger. Although I do quite like the pun used 'First Lady of pop', it is not a convention of music magazines to have puns and alliteration ect in there cover lines, however during my research i have noticed a few magazine covers which use these devices. The main aim of a cover line is to attract and interest the reader and I feel the pun on this front cover would do that.

I included a bar code and date line which are both conventions of a music magazine, i made sure they were big enough to see but not too big so they do not take away from the main features of the magazine.

I created all the cover lines and tryed to use the left hand side rule so I put a puff and a pug on the left so when the magazine is on the shelf and just the left hand side of the cover is on show the customer can still see some of the articles. Pugs are used to persuade people to buy the magazine and usually involve something free, or a competition ect. As Billboard is an American magazine I decided my pug would be a chance to win MTV music award tickets as this is a big event and is world wide but especially popular in America. My puff is an exclusive with Drake who is extremely popular with a large fan base who would buy the magazine to read about him. The cover line about Rihanna is a small introduction to what the interview will be about, only giving a small snippet will interests the reader enough to get them to purchase the magazine with out giving too much away.

After doing this cover it highlighted some key areas I will need to spend time on when creating my magazine. First of all is finding a suitable font, although the font used here isn't dreadful for my final piece I need to find something more professional, I also need to create a bold colour scheme which will help the magazine stand out and adds to it meaning.

Peer assessment

They noted that I had used most of the conventions however I need to remember to use the web url and the price. Also they liked the size of my cover star image as it made it clear to the audience what the magazine was centered around and thought the photo was 'cheeky' which added some character to the magazine. The layout was pretty good in their opinion althouh a few more cover lines could be added. The main improvement though was that the main cover line needs to stand out more, they were unable to tell which coverline linked with the cover star.