Front page
I think the front page went very well. After looking at Metal Hammers layout I used and similar format which worked incredibly well because I was able to include lots of images and text without making the pages seem too cramped or bare. The colour scheme also worked very well since the colours (blue and black) blended well but also made the front cover stand out a lot (inspired by Kerrangs use of colour).
The font used was very bold and the style seemed to fit the tastes of my target audience since it was similar to both Kerrangs and Metal Hammers font styles. The use of buttons seemed to work very well since buttons were used in both Kerrang and Metal Hammer and worked very well. The colour scheme made stick out from the other colours and the help to make the front cover seem less bare. I also thought that using lightning as a special worked extremely well since it really did stick out and I after seeing what Metal Hammer did with the fire effects it would cater towards my specific target audience.
The only bad thing about this front over is the masthead. Now the actual name of the magazine is very good since the title Metal Madness it reflect the type of music featured in the magazines, is rather catch thanks to the use of alliteration and that the name would stick out to my target audience… however there was a problem.
I tried to use Metal Hammers technique of making the word metal part of the H in hammer, this didn’t work to well since it was hard to identify the word metal mainly due how I was place in the M but I think this problem could be fixed by making the word metal come down vertically in a smaller size at then the word A-D-N-E-S-S continuing on from the M to link to words together. The only change I need to make is how I’m going to fit the metal and madness words together in order to create the masthead.
Contents page
I think the contents went better than expected but still had problems. The good bits were that the layout was done rather well since I used Metal Hammer's example of half the page contents and the other half a small article so the images were placed to fill up any empty space left in each half and in this case it worked very well since the images (while taking up most of the space of the page) didn’t cramp the contents of the page and were structure pretty well.
Also the button in the centre of the page helped to boost the colour scheme and show that the page was divided in half. The bad bits were that the colour scheme didn’t go very what. Specifically I mean the colour used in the masthead and numbering because the colour used in the button and background on both half’s of the page worked very well.
I decided to use red for the masthead colour since it help to make the page stand out and work well with the white background… however I didn’t contrast well with the front cover since the colours used there were blue and black plus I had already used yellow and orange in the button which worked since the other buttons used these colours but the red was really pushing it.
The only change I need to make is that instead of using red for the masthead colour try to use black or blue or a combination like dark/navy blue.
Double page spread
I think the double page spread went well but was difficult to create since I was unable to actually use photographs and I was unsure what the photos were going to look like. What I liked about the double-page spread was the layout was done pretty well since I based the design on Metal Hammers double page spread since I thought that one was done exceptionally well, the text was featured mainly on the left half of the page and took up only a small portion of the right half.
This meant that I didn’t have to included so many images since the left side of the page consisted mostly of text, plus I included quotations on different parts of both pages so that specific words in the article would stick out and it made less bare, also the heading was placed a an strange angle so that it mixed things up a bit.
I also took another one of Metal Hammers example and included a compilation of images in the bottom right hand side of the page so that it showed more of the artist and just made the magazine look better (also it made the magazine look less bare).
However the magazine did have some issues, firstly because I was unable to do and outline of the main image used for the double page spread the background looks really bare, this is such a bad thing since when I decide what image I’m going to use all I have to is place it there but without the image the background does look pretty bad.
Also I created and heading for the page to show that readers were one a specific section the only problem was that the colours I chose didn’t contrast well with the previous colours used and made the heading look really out of place. The changes I need to make are to make sure I have an image ready for when I create the double page spread and to change the colour scheme used in the page heading.
