Planning the name & housestyle for my music magazine

The aim for me in this task was to come up with effective name for my magazine, create a logo and set a house style for my magazine. To do so i will begin with listing a few suggested names and picking out the best one. Next of all, after selecting an appropriate name I will put it forward into my logo creation. At the very end I will come up with the house style which will consists of the font style & size, colour and the tone of language. The overall production of the logo and the house style will reflect the research which I have completed on the music magazines and will contain many areas which I have been taught from it such as the codes and conventions.

"URBAN":Due to the fact that my magazine will be focused on hip hop music genre, the "urban" title will clearly convey the area where hip hop genre was brought up. Urban clearly signifies the busy, city lifestyle. In my opinion this title is very effective as the audience can clearly link the title to the genre the music magazine is going to be focused on, however from my research I have acknowledged that my music magazine is not only to be focused on hip hop, but pop as well. The word "URBAN" creates a more stable and definitive feeling about the magazine which does not effectively represent the pop genre which is more fluent in terms of vocal sounds. I really like the title as it easily creates a image in the readers head which is very memorable, however it is not my favorite choice as it does not represent both of my genres.

"FLOW":At first I have really liked this title as it is very short, which is very memorable and stays in your head for long. This would really benefit my magazine as by this the audience could easily link this word to my magazine which could affect the selling rate. The word "flow" is mainly associated with harmony which in fact represents the pop culture in a very good method. This way the fluent vocal sounds in the music genre are presented clearly to the audience. On the other hand, pop is not the main focus of my music magazine therefore this title will not be effective. In order to represent the pop culture in my magazine I could use "flow" as a part of my title in order to represent the pop culture and keep the positive image which is transferred by it.

'BB' - Bass Boosted:
This is the last title which I have come up in this task. The title can be shorted to a "BB" acronym. By this the title will be easily memorized by the audience as it will only consist of two letters. While creating the title I was focused more on the music  which appear on both the genres rather than the overall image the genres produce. The idea of "Bass Boosted" represents the amount of bass the music has. Bass is widely used in music industry, in both hip hop and pop genres however it is more associated with hip hop. Therefore I find that this title is not suitable for my magazine as it is biased towards the hip hop society.

In terms of the final conclusion towards the title of the magazine I have come up with an idea to merge the Urban and Flow title together which will provide me with the title URBANFLOW. By this the title will strongly present the hip hop and pop genre which the magazine is going to be based on, which I really find effective. This way both the hip hop and pop audience will be attracted to my magazine. The next step for me is to visually construct the logo for my magazine. 

Creating the logo:

On the left we can see my first attempt at creating my logo. I have decided to use WOB in order to make my text stand out and be more customer appealing. Instead of having a simple text I have chosen to provide the text with a creative background. As a result of this I have come up with the parallelogram design. This design looks very modern and reflects today;s innovative music creations. On the other hand we can see that the overall font which I have used for the title is very sharp edged therefore it does not appeal to the pop music genre and the female audience my music magazine has.

As a result of my earlier reference to pop and the audience I had to experiment with the use of fonts in my logo, Due to the fact that Photoshop in school only provided me with a limited number of fonts I have found a font which depicted the fluent image of the "flow" part of my title. However this was not the final effect which I was looking for therefore I had to take into account further development of the logo.

I then have taken the Photoshop file home and downloaded a additional font from the internet which we can see being used on the "flow" part of the title. This font represents the fluency much better and makes the logo look more stylish. As a result the logo now conveys both hip hop and pop cultures which makes it an appropriate logo to use for my magazine.

After creating a sufficient logo, it was time for me to experiment with the colours used on the text in order to transmit a given message. As we can see I have focused on the "URBAN" part of the text and at first filled it in with a camouflage texture. While asking my peers I have noticed that their initial response was quite negative as they did not think that this idea showed the "metropolitan" image well.

As an improvement I have chosen a second image which in this case is a skyline of a city and implemented it into my text. In my opinion the final outcome is very positive. To prove my point I have yet again asked for a 3rd party feedback from my peers and in fact they agreed that now the logo suits the purpose. On the other hand we can see that the "FLOW" part of the logo has not been manipulated. I have chosen to leave it as it is as I really like the WOB effect because it creates a strong contrast between colour, which in fact attracts the audience.

House Style:

Colour Scheme:
In terms of the colours which I would like to use for my music magazine, I have chosen to use a colour scheme of WHITE/GREY/BLACK. The three colours work well together as they show a fade of colour which as a results creates harmony. By the use of such colours I will be allowed to easily emphasise different areas of my magazine as the colours have a high contrast between each other. Throughout my front page, content page and the double page spread I will aim to use grey as my background. By this I will eliminate the negative space which I have found that is unnecessary based on my surveys. I then intend to use white/black for my headlines on the cover of the magazine. This will mean that I will follow the WOB effect which has been used on my logo/masthead which will effectively emphasise the articles in my magazine. Further into the pages of my magazine such as on the contents page or the double page spread the white/black colours will be used to write text, headlines etc. In terms of text I will follow the standard format of black text on white background as by this I will make sure that my text is clearly read by the audience. I believe that by the use of such colours I make my magazines image quite neutral therefore it will match both audiences of hip hop and pop as no symbols will be transferred by the colours used.

Font Style/Size:
Throughout my magazine I will use various font styles and font sizes in order to transfer a given message to the audience. For the headlines which will appear on my front cover of the magazine I will use the same font as I have used for the "URBAN" part of my magazine logo which is called "Agency FB". By this the headlines will match the masthead of my magazine, continuing the corporate image within the design. For my main headline I will use a rather larger font which could take up to the whole width of the page, however for my coverlines I will use a size which is smaller yet effective for the audience to notice. By the use of variable font sizes I will proritize the text which will draw the audiences attention, making them look at larger texts first. Moving onto the content page and the double page spread of my magazine I will use similar font styles. For the headlines again I will use the "Agency FB" font as by this I will make my pages match. On the other hand, for longer pieces of text such as article paragraphs I will use a font which is more delicate however still matches the sharp, edgy look of "Agency FB". This will improve the readability of the text due to the fact that the font will be simple yet continue the same style as the logo and headlines.

Type of language & layouts:
The final parts of my magazine which I have to take into account during my creation are the language and layouts used. Due to the fact that my magazine is to be focused more on the younger audience (16-19 and 20-23) I will tend to use informal language. By doing so the audience will find the magazine more appealing towards them as it will be seen as more friendly. By this the audience will be more persuaded to read the magazine and treat the magazine as a form of escapism, because they will enjoy the articles and content shown via text. Moving onto the layouts which I will put forward into my making. By planing out layouts for my magazine beforehand, I will be allowed to design where I want specific content to be placed. By this I will make sure that my magazines structure is well thought out and meets its purpose. In my earlier post we can see the layouts which I have come up for my magazine. For the front cover I have come up with the final design straight away whereas for the contents page and the double page spread I have come up with more than one design. By this during my making I will be allowed to pick out useful areas from both of my designs and come up with a final design which will match my liking and make my magazine successful.