Final Magazine

Magazine Cover Audience Feedback

Magazine Construction 3

The final magazine construction changed the following points -

• "Featuring" was added underneath the title in the same type face and style in order to both adhere to the genre and make the writing on the cover more evident that it is part of the magazines features.
• A date and price were added - originally these were theorised to go at the top in yellow, but I found the contrast in colours displeasing and the placing of them to derive from the most striking area of the cover. As such, they were added to the bottom. 
• Puffs were added, drawing upon the Little White Lies tradition of having them framing the face of the main image, both in order to not detract from the central art and to draw attention to not only the main feature. Due to my target audience being those who enjoy cult cinema, reference to films such as "Drive" (Enticing Nicholas Winding-Refn fans) and Nightcrawler (Attracting a more modern audience) would increase audience interest in the magazine. Originally, the puffs were to be the same font and colour as the date and time, winding around the head in a sort of Halo arc, however, this was not continued due to the aesthetically pleasing nature of the final choice.
• A title was added, utilising the dichotomy of the word "Two" in presenting two colours with the varying backdrops of white and black, connoting good and evil. The title has a marble overlay which is shown below, and an inversion of colour was used to transform it from light to dark blue.

The final poster, including all mentioned above.

The originally attempted puffs

The original placing of the date and time, not used.

Magazine Construction 2

Many developments were made between my previous construction post and this one due to my focus being on producing poster development posts. A list of improvements can be found below, with exemplar images at the bottom of the post. 

• The title was made bigger in order to fit the space at the top and provide a more eye catching spectacle, with the tag line being changed from "Definitive movie reviews" to "Definitive Move News and Reviews" in order to promote a more journalistic based criticism instead of just a media-critique magazine. 
• The image and beard were replaced due to the spots on Gabriel's head in the previous image, and through the use of the spot healing tool, were removed. The image and false beard were then merged in to one layer in order to make manipulation easier. The new foreground layer was duplicated twice; the first duplication had the cutout effect added to it and then lowered the opacity to 80% in order to provide the detail of the real life face but the artistic intention of the filter. The second duplication was placed underneath and enlarged by 0.1 in order to provide an outer glow which the simple outer glow effect found within the FX tab couldn't provide. 
• A barcode was added, simply through taking a stock photo from a google search and placing it in the bottom left hand corner.
• The main image looked relatively out of place with the three different versions of the same layer clashing in some parts. In order to overcome this I created a rectangle and placed it over all three of the layers, colouring the rectangle the same shade of teal as I did the title, and changing the blend mode to hue in order to provide a limited area colour correction and blend the three layers together. Not only did this blend the entirety of the three layers but also allowed the beard to look more in place.
• Finally, two separate images which were taken when I was on the south bank were blended, with both reflected a 75% opacity and gaussian blur at 5 pixels. This provided the perfect, stylised backdrop for the magazine cover and increased the idea of anonymity within the city, expanding upon Barthes enigma code. The image was much more subtle than the stock photo which was used prior to that, also shown below. 

The revised tagline and enlarged title

The rectangle which was used to blend the three layers and beard

The second draft of the poster, only now requiring a title and puffs

The highly colorised photo of myself which was not chosen to be in the background of the poster.

Magazine Construction 1

Starting off on my cover, my previously mentioned influence in Little White Lies and ALA-Champ will have a major effect on the way in which the magazine comes out. Starting out, the masthead was the most intriguing thing for me due to the decision to make the background black. I wanted to create a neon-styled title which reflected my film, and did so as shown below. 

Using the neon type base, the following effects were used in order to present the blue glow and the depth which creates the verisimilitude of the title. The top layer is the one which is seen on the foreground of the above image, with the one below providing the depth to the text, utilising a Gaussian blur and 15 pixels. This shadow gives the title depth in my opinion, something adding to the professionally aesthetic title of the magazine. Following this I added the main image through the Photoshop RAW image editing software. Not changing much apart from the saturation of the image, reducing the contrast and heightening the vividness of the colours in order to again provide depth, the image was taken on a digital SLR and originally with a white background, although after importing I used the magical wand tool and inverted selection in order to remove this and allow a transparent background. It was found, however, that the image chosen had our protagonist looking considerably younger than we wanted him to, and as a result utilised the brush tool in conjunction with the brush presets in order to give him a beard and make him look older. Examples of this can be found below, providing the look of my magazine covers first draft. 

Institutional Analysis of Sight & Sound

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Institutional Analysis of Little White Lies

The publisher of the magazine Little White Lies is TCOLondon. This is a company which specialises in slightly off the wall, individual and quirky takes on stories which would not usually get views, or angles on films which are not usually assessed. The very branding of the website (www.TCOLondon.com) as shown below differentiates itself from other forms of media by defining itself as a breed, something which is lifelike and ever evolving. From work in skateboarding, phone companies, games consoles, and sponsoring YouTubers, their list of partners ranges from Grolsch to Audi. This shows where the inspiration for Little White Lies comes from, as well as why the company decided to back such an out-there product. Even within their distribution, with Little White Lies originality being an online-only magazine, they establish themselves against the norm and through this use of technology cater to a specific audience.

This audience is that of 18-30 year olds who are either young professionals in or students of media. They must have significant disposable income because of the monthly subscription of £3.95 for a product which, looking past its potential as a collectable and art, provides less than a week of entertainment. This suggests than that like Empire and Sight&Sound, that the demographic for the company is ABC1 and massively involved with South East London promotions. This is done in the Barbican, BFI and Picturehouse cinemas' and film festivals which caters to the sort of indie film buff audience with disposable income. The benefits of this are found within independent and cult cinema fans who would rather discuss films as an art form rather than just passive entertainment. The magazine caters to independent critics and in depth interviews with cast, directors and producers in order to help their readers form opinions upon the films they cover. 

The magazine, along with others' of its type, use mosaic geodemographics in order to establish the type of person their product is going to cater towards. An audience segmentation can be found below. This shows that the majority of the audience is found within London based Hipsters which falls under the magazines demographic of Group O buyers, standing for Urban Intelligence that 'Mostly consists of young and well educated people who are open to new ideas and influences'. It also caters to audiences such as Group E, young people who have gone through higher education and can be liberal of idea, and have access to disposable income. It caters to this audience through claiming to be about truth which connotes authenticity. Because of this, the more niche audiences of Arthouse film fans and Aspiring filmmakers are also catered towards, while more mainstream film fans and design students are left to read magazines like Empire and Total Film.

The purpose of the magazine fits with the publisher's slightly independent style of reporting. Even from the weight of the paper the magazine feels like a substantial product, filling a gap in the market for collectors items concerning film, which is then corroborated through the hand drawn/graphically modified artistic style of the covers (Of which they employ independent designers) and the typography of the front cover. The choice of film is also essential as to its purpose, and in turn the sorts of audience which are going to read it. Taking up yet another niche gap in the market, focusing on films such as "Black Swan" and "Let The Right One In", they decipher films which are not only in between the mainstream and indie genre but also those which are going to obtain a cult following. Due to this, in combination with the subtle yet aesthetically pleasing cover which screams that the magazine producers know their movies, the magazines' purpose is to fill a gap in the market between Empire's mainstream coverage and Sight & Sound's more individual movie coverage through an artistic and bold cover, substantial page thickness and quality which would leave you wanting to show your collection off to your friends. 

Sight & Sound "Cosmopolis" Magazine Cover Reasearch

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Empire "Bourne Legacy" Magazine Cover Analysis

This is a piece of analysis on one of 'Empire Magazines' front covers completed using the Photoshop software on the Mac: 

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Little White Lies "Attack the Block" Magazine Cover Analysis