Lo4 - Evaluation

For this unit I was asked by SPH Publishing to make three pages of a magazines that could be of any genre in which targeted a Sheffield based audience, these three pages are a double page spread, contents page and a front cover. My choice of genre was sports, more specifically equestrian, since I’m friends with people who are experienced in riding and own horses, meaning I had easy access to taking photos and completing interviews for pages such as my double page spread.

For my house style colours, I originally decided to use colours such as either lilac, red or pastel pink. I thought I’d use these colours since pinks and purples are associated with being attractive to a female audience due to traditional stereotypes. Secondly, pastel colours are conventional to equestrian magazines since they appeal to an older, educated audience. Since florescent colours are typically used to attract a younger, C2DE audience. Therefore, by using opposite colours I was able to make it clear that my magazine is aimed at an ABC1 older, mostly female, partly male target audience. However, in the end I decided to use earthy, neutral toned colours since these colours connote maturity due to their toned town, more ‘sophisticated’ denotation, therefore attracting my older, ABC1 target audience of both males and females since ‘earthy’ colours are typically gender neutral, other assets such as photos and graphics are used to attract the younger half of my audience due to their visually appealing affects.

Originally, I chose my masthead to be called ‘Mane&Tail’, however, when I saw how it looked on my front cover I thought it was too small since this phrase is quite long meaning it had to be scaled down to a smaller size in order to fit proportionally on my front cover, therefore by choosing a name with less letters (canter), I was able to make the masthead bigger, which is more conventional to a magazine since mastheads don’t typically consist of more than 6 letters. I chose the name of my masthead to be “Canter” since this word is equestrian jargon, making my front cover instantly appeal to an audience of people who are interested in horses. Therefore, not only helping attract my target audience but also connote the genre of the magazine. I decided to use a serif font called ‘vogue’ from dafont.com on my mast head as this font type is conventional to equestrian magazines. Since, it stereotypically appeals to an ABC1 audience, due to it looking fancy with its flicks. My primary target audience will most likely be of the ABC1 social grade since horses are expensive to maintain, meaning the owner would typically have a highly paid job.  Although, the younger 16-23-year-old half of my audience will most likely have their expenses funded by their assumingly ABC1 parents. This font type will also help my magazine attract a female audience due to the flicks looking ‘hand-written’. We associate hand-written text with elements such as diaries and gossip which are things stereotypically conventional to girls. Meaning, overall the use of serif font helps me attract my ABC1, mostly female, partly male target audience. I was originally going to be submitting my 6th version however after audience feedback I came to realise that everyone liked my 3rd version way more in comparison to all the others, Therefore, I decided to go with that one as my final front cover page. 

My model wore equestrian wear such as: jodhpurs, riding boots, polo top and a riding hat, as not only did it make my front cover relatable to those who own horses and wear this sort of gear (which is the majority of riders), but the costume also reinforces the genre of the magazine since we associate this sort of denotation with horses and. I also decided to included a bar-code graphic since equestrian magazines typically aren’t free. Due to the target demographic having a high disposable, I know that my audience will able to afford the magazine. Secondly, since my target audience is niche, the magazine won’t gross as much as more popular genres such as pop magazines, therefore most equestrian magazines are fairly expensive, and a bar-code is conventional to my genre helping my magazine look realistic and professional. My front cover includes a banner across the top of it as this is something that is conventional not only to equestrian magazine but all magazines, therefore the use of this graphic will help my magazine look more realistic. Other graphics on my magazine consist of circles which I made using the shape tool on photoshop, these graphics help attract my audience since they give a stamp like effect, giving the audience more to look at whilst still being subtle in doing so, this is conventional to equestrian magazine as more subtle, simple elements help attract an older audience as it’s seen as more sophisticated / mature.

I decided to have my cell lines on a banner reading phrases such as ‘top tips for a healthy horse’ and ‘travelling in the heat’ since these are very popular subject matters which my audience will stereo-typically be interested in, therefore luring them in towards buying the magazine. Secondly, I included a main cover line reading ‘interview with Frankie Tilbrook’ anchored to a pull quote which originally read ‘I nearly gave up hope’ in order to create drama since it’s a stereotypical fact that females aged 16-35 like to gossip and listen to drama, therefore this pull quote helps attract my mostly female, partly male 16-35 year old target audience. Although, I changed the pull quote to say ‘riding caused me to struggle’ since this is something my model actually said in her interview therefore not disappointing my audience when they read the double page spread, despite this quote being changed it still has the same luring affect and if not intrigues my audience more since its more specific to riding. Despite all of this, in the end I ended up removing my pull quote in my final version as I thought the font looked to too immature due to its bubbly denotation which typically appeals kids and I also think it took up too much room, taking away the attention from the main cover image. 

Lastly the graphic at the bottom of the page resembles a sign that you’d typically see on a horse-riding route showing directions, therefore this shape helps reinforce the genre of the magazine as people who go horse riding will associate these signs with hacking out. Since the sign also resembles a directional symbol, it plays with the words as I’m talking about locations that have availability. To make the sign I used the shape tool on Adobe Photoshop CS6 and made one rectangle and one square which I then linked together by double clicking each layer, I used the text tool and the ‘Centaur’ font to type ‘Availability at Clough Fields and Moorwood’ on to the sign which are the names of two Sheffield based yards. The fact that these places are located in Sheffield helps connote that my magazine is aimed at a Sheffield based audience, as only people living here would typically find interest in these local places, making my magazine fit the brief given to me by my client SPH publishing since t attracts a Sheffield based audience.

I decided not to re-create the contents page I had drawn on my visualisation diagram as it wasn’t exactly conventional the genre since having each column of a different colour wouldn’t fit the genre due to the inclusiveness of multiple different colours that I planned on using. Since, they would connote that the product is aimed at an audience of children due to various bright bold colours typically catching children’s eyes, which is not who I’m targeting. Therefore, I wanted to avoid giving the wrong implications.  

Since there isn’t a lot going on the page, I didn’t think it would be suitable to add a tiny slug reading ‘contents. As not only might my audience have not seen it, but most equestrian magazine contents pages that I have looked at do not include a small contents page slugs, instead they all have the word contents in big writing like I have on mine. Therefore, although this type of contents page isn’t conventional to popular magazines, it Is regarding equestrian ones – making my contents page fitting of my genre. Due to this, I made the word ‘contents’ the same size as my masthead and incorporated it into the main image to give more room on the page since this photo took up the top half of the page. I used the same font as my I did on masthead (‘Vogue’ found on dafont.com) as it reinforces my brand throughout the magazine and keeps a consistent representation of my brand, it also helps connote the same messages such as the fact that the magazine is aimed at an ABC1 audience due to the font being serif and fancy looking. When editing my main image and text together I decided to reduce the visible opacity of the word contents by double clicking the layer and reducing its opacity by 27% on Photoshop. I wanted to do is in order to make the two assets blend more seamlessly together, this use of opacity reduction also makes the text almost resemble a cloud due it its transparency, grey colour and placement in the sky. Which I think gives a mature, visually appealing effect. This resemblance also helps reinforce the theme of nature and animals. Lastly, I erased part of the text that overlapped my models head using the eraser tool, to give the image a more visually appealing 3D effect, helping attract the younger half of my audience - due to this being a more modern familiarity due to the rise of 3D films and games in the last few years, appealing to the 16 – 20 year old digital native half of my audience. In the background of this image you can see the whole of Sheffield, helping my contents page appeal to my targeted Sheffield based audience. Fitting the brief given to me by SPH publishing since I have the page relative to an audience of people who live in Sheffield.

I decided to use the colours pastel blue, black and grey since they’re gender neutral therefore attracting both men and women which is who I’m targeting. They also help reinforce the theme of nature and animals since the grey and blue represent the colours of the cloudy sky within the main image on my contents page. – I decide upon these colours since they match the colour scene of my main contents page photo, making everything match one another well and giving a more professional denotation. I think the main photo is suitable for my contents page since my model is simply walking with her horse and has a lot of choice regarding what she wants to do next with her horse and where she wants to go, which reinforces the fact that this page is for my audience to make their own decisions on what page they think is the most suitable for them.

For my double page spread, I chose the headline to be ‘riding with rocks’, as the girl I am interviewing (my friend Frankie) has a horse called Rocky. My double page spread is based on Frankie’s experience with Rocky and therefore this headline is relevant to the page. I also decided upon this headline since the words riding and rocks are play on words as they rhyme, making the headline snappy and easy to read which is very conventional not only to equestrian magazines but all magazines. I decided to have the words ‘riding with’ in serif font as I am trying to keep themes consistent throughout my magazine. For example, my front cover page consists of a lot of serif due it’s connotations, resulting in the attraction of an ABC1 audience. Therefore, I want to keep this representation as the demographic I’m targeting is still an ABC1, 16-35 year old, mostly female, partly male audience. However, I have decided to put the word ‘Rocks’ in a sans-serif since the horse is not only one of the most dominant elements of the double page spread since the interview is based on Frankie and her horse. But also, the genre of the magazine is again reinforced as the sans-serif font connotes that horses are the focus of the magazine due to it standing out compared to the serif font and other text.

Using the eraser tool, I removed the areas of the word ‘rocks’ which overlapped onto the horses head reinforce the fact that the horse is the main focus, by doing this it also gives a 3D visually appealing effect as it looks like the text is placed behind the horses head. Following this, I added colour to the words ‘riding’ an ‘rocks’ as I thought the plain white looked a bit boring, therefore I chose a colour that I thought fitted with the colour scheme of the photo, that being oranges, browns, whites, golds. Originally, I just chose a random colour with the paint tool, however, I decided to use the picker tool in order to get a colour that actually matched the tones within the main image, which I gained from one of the highlighted areas of light on the floor – allowing the text and image to correlate nicely. Lastly, I added an extra title at the bottom of the page as I thought the title ‘riding with rocks’ wasn’t very clear to my audience regarding what the DPS is actually about since they wont know the name of Frankie's horse making the title a little confusing, so, I added a headline reading ‘an interview with Frankie Tilbrook’ to give the audience more of an  understanding on what the page was about. The main image is taken using an establishing shot as it shows the horses full body length and background which is clear and easy to denote, therefore most likely allowing my audience to relate to the photo since you can clearly see Clough Fields indoor stables which is a very popular location that most riders from Sheffield will be familiar with, therefore once again making my double page spread fitting of the brief given to me by SPH publishing. 

I chose the colours gold, white and black to have my body copy in since all these colours are included within the main image, therefore tying everything together quite nicely and constantly linking everything back to the main image since this is the most dominant asset on the page. I used yellow to highlight the interviewers questions and made the text bold, I used black to highlight Frankie's answers to show a clear division between people and make it easier for the reader to understand who is who, this is a stereotypical convention of interviews and therefore makes my magazine look more realistic and professional.

I also used conventions such as a lead at the top of the page to ease the reader into the double page spread and understand why the interview happened and what it’s about. Lastly, I used a drop capital since this is the most conventional asset of a double page spread within any genre of magazine, therefore it was a must to include.

I changed my double page spread entirely from the original plan I had drawn on my visualisation diagram as I decided that I wanted to use one main image on the left hand page, since, whilst doing further double page spread research I discovered that this sort of layout is conventional to all magazines regardless of their genre. Therefore, although I’m doing an equestrian magazine, I knew that by using a layout which popular, trendy magazines use, I’d be able to make my double page spread fit my genre whilst incorporating a modern twist, which was ideal for me as I wanted to break certain ‘boring’ stereotypes that some people associate with equestrian magazines, such as minimal photos and plain body copy. I also really wanted to use this image on a page as I thought it was too good not to be used since I had decided not to make a title page. Overall I simply didn’t like the appearance of my original visualisation diagram idea anymore, especially once I had made the first asset of it on Photoshop and realised it didn’t look as good as I thought it would.