Design - Magazine Logo Ideas

These are just some of the magazine name and logo designs that I have roughly created. Before I activate a poll for the general public to choose their favourite, I will be making more varied designs to make sure I have exhausted all angles of design to do with magazines covering the genre of metal. The following is a very brief explanation of each of the above four logo designs:

• #4 is my personal favourite out of the four, although the font might not the best for the job.
• #3 was inspired by Q magazine, and it would likewise be placed on the top left corner on each edition - possibly changing the rust effect to whatever suits the main photo each week.
• #2 looks a bit of a mess, but leaves a lot of room to comfortably fit sub-titles between the letters that stick out.
• #1 was inspired by the Total Guitar and Classic Rock magazine, so the chosen font might be way off, but the placement and 3D effect of the two words is more what I was experimenting with.

Research - Magforum.com

http://www.magforum.com/index.htm

The above link will direct you to a website dedicated to all things magazine; from guidelines to creating a front cover to a detailed history of the media form that is magazines. I will be frequently using this source of information during the production stages of my front cover, contents page, and double-page spread.

Photoshop Practise #2

For my second official practise at using Photoshop, I decided to focus on the layout and design of a magazine double-page spread. I chose a different genre of music - hip hop - as I wanted to try a completely different style than my actual design will house. This came about as I was focusing more on utilising certain tools in Photoshop, but not yet wanting to apply the target audience's needs to my design thoughts.

I utilised text from Wikipedia for the article, and took quotes from the official DVD the group has released. "Steadily shine in '10" is a play on the groups' famous line "Steadily shine in '99", from their hit single "Heavenly Divine". I made sure to include several integral elements to magazines such as puffs to make it look as professional as possible.

Photoshop Practise #1

The above image took approximately 30 minutes to complete; this was because I didn't plan what I was going to edit before starting, and so ended up changing my mind several times before settling on the current version. My image shows evidence of minimal skill in areas of photo manipulation (far right face and ring has been removed), as well as simply a good eye for "what looks right". The below links will direct you to the images I took advantage of to produce the piece of work.

I used this image for the far right face manipulation.
I used this image for the blood splatters.
I used this image for the moon in the background.

Magazine Specification

The results from my questionnaire have brought back the following guidelines to bear in mind upon designing my magazine pages:

• The design is to be targeted at a male audience.
• Likewise, the age range is roughly of 17-19 year olds.
• Current magazines that have a similar genre are Metal Hammer and NME - I will use these for inspiration.
• ..Out of the two, Metal Hammer was labelled 'metal' more frequently, therefore the best out of the two to rely on regarding layout, photo dynamics, magazine name, etc.
• The double page spread is to have new album news and an interview of the band.
• One comment that stood out - from the final open question - was that editors of articles can be too obviously opinionated or biased - I will try to write a fair but unique article bearing this in mind.