After taking lots of photographs of my model I wanted to have a basic understanding of my layout, I was trying to stick to common conventions in the Indie genre, to help attract my target audience.
My target audience will be 16 to 30 year olds and both genders. The ethnicity is generally white because most Indie artist are white. Generally the ethnicity of the musicians are reflected by the fans. I think it is important to say that this rule is slowly changing with the use of the web.
This is the lay out to my front cover, I think it sticks to the Indie conventions of being plain and simple with limited writing. I think that Indie magazines are this way because the people that read them are very image obsessed and want the magazine to be a type of ''fashion'' accessory when they're carrying it, they also want to be noticed for being stylish and different.
To create my front cover I started off by making my dimensions 27.5cmx21.5cm.
I want my magazine to appeal to my target audience from the age 16 to 30 so I decided to take to social media to ask people of those ages which picture they would prefer to see on an Indie mag cover.
The responses I got were of a mixed opinion with equal results so I decided to create something new and different to see if they liked that more.
I started off with this picture then went into photo shop and made it look like he was sticking his middle finger up. I did this because it makes it look like he's sticking his finger up at common conventions and stereo-types which is what most Indie types do. I think having him stick his finger up is a risk but it also means there would always be publicity (good or bad) much like Madonna's ''like a prayer'' video, it was highly criticized but gave her a lot of publicity even if it was for a bad reason. The shot was good because it has direct address and we can see the expressions on his face. This is a very common convention.
I wanted to have the finger looking quite blurred to tone it down a bit like the swear word was in the magazine I researched.
I asked people on social media if they preferred this picture and the response shows that they did. I think this picture would be good on the front cover of an Indie magazine because it sticks to conventions in the way it's a very staged image with the model making eye contact and there's a very small colour palette but I would cut out the picture from mid chest as I don't think the carpet will look good in the background, it also means it sticks to conventions of having a medium close up on the front cover. Where as having the white wall with grey shadows around the edge is on most Indie front covers.
However it also challenges lots of common conventions like having a boy in a dress with make up all over his face sticking his finger up. Most magazines are very fashion based and lots of readers want to look like or dress like the people on the front, I did this to make the magazine stand out on the shelf because it's not something a consumer comes across in everyday life and because it's challenging conventions it will be different to all the other Indie magazines next to it. It also means that I can write an article about how he doesn't want his career to be about his image.
I added on a gender sign for men and women. I did this so I could write about how the artist supports gender equality.
After reviewing this I decided the symbol looks too fake and you can tell its been edited on so I decided to do some more research.
Justin Bieber's (who was on the cover of a well known Indie magazine NME) made a concept video where he got artists to do art on different frames of his music video. This concept completely change the way I looked at how an Indie front cover could be created.
I was inspired to recreate a magazine version of the concept, it would provide the opportunity to have lots of imagery without taking away from the Indie look of the model.
Using this design idea I feel it will challenge the conventions of Indie magazines I have research which are minimalistic. While looking at this I found an artist Eduardo Bertone who, much like the video, has lots of hidden symbols in his art. I found that I could insert all the feelings and messages I was trying to create with my Photo shoot, such as sexual indifference, love, peace and strength.
I came up with the concept of having the back ground art in back and white, while in contrast have colour on the artist. I felt I could achieve my imagery with out taking away from the model. I wanted a simple colour palette so I stuck with black from the dress and added yellow, red and green. This would help with the contrast.
As you can see I spent a long time researching both the artists paintings to get some of the symbols he uses and the actual drawing of the symbols. I was pleased with the result, now I had to make sure the Masthead text was appropriate for the genre and would appeal to my target audience.
Creating my masthead:
I wanted to add independent and Indie together so I came up with this:
I thought the dot above the "e" could represent the ''I'' in Indie as well as the ''E'' in independent.
After getting feed back on this I realized it was too large so I decided to compact the words together even more, then added it to my front cover along with cover lines. I wanted to have a title of the magazine that was easy to brand like the NME. I think this has worked well. This sticks with common conventions.
It was important to address the image to font ratio so I made the cover lines smaller and alternated the colours, each line is either white or pale pink. This would help with the contrasting, which was hard because the background was so busy.
I decided that a bar code looked out of place on the front cover so I didn't add one. This would be placed on the back cover.
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