Due to me struggling significantly under the development of my cover, mostly revolving around the issue of the masthead to display the name of my product 'Void', I spent the majority of my time here attempting to perfect it in the hopes that I would be able to correct it enough for me to focus my attention on the remaining conventions as this was starting to become a major concern to me. The longer I left the masthead in a state of denial then it would increase the risk of me falling behind in my coursework which could be extremely detrimental to me. With this consideration in mind I felt it would be appropriate to tackle this problem head on enough for me to move my workload onto tuning in the remainder of the aspects on the page itself.
With my lecturers expertise in construction tasks, she recommended I should switch the positions of the 'Fleet Foxes' headline with that of the 'Albums Review', in her opinion where the albums section has been previously placed was too contorted, because it was a long bulliton, it required more room then the average title, so preferably it should be moved out of the corner and allowed free roam of a wider vicinity. If the names of the articles appeared 'squashed', it can undermime the professional standard I am trying to replicate as to the audience they may perceive this in the notion I have tried to include too many features on the cover which has caused it to become too packed, with the crowding therefore losing the initial appeal of the product as it can come across too messy as opposed to what I wish it perceived itself like. To combat this issue, the alteration I described above was more then necessary to avoid that said crowding. The new location for the 'Albums Guide' much suited its requirements as it was now permitted with more leisure in the sense it wasn't as contort it initially had been. Because the 'Fleet Foxes' headline was mostly wording rather then a combination of shapes as well like the album one, it could easily be downgraded in size without difficult to occupy the space more thoroughly as it would be a difficult procedure to lower the sizing of the lines which could potentially be heavily time consuming and restricting.
As I was currently undecided to how I wanted to display my masthead and under the self perceptive notion that the 'V' wasn't strong enough on the page as I had anticipated, I felt I should completely revamp my idea and opt for a full word as my title, this would be more profound and noticeable to the audience as it occupied a larger consistency of space then a single letter could justify. With me attemtpting to portray my artists as 'inspirations' to my public due to the effort they have put into their music to get them at the status they are today, I felt a motivational masthead would be highly appropriate for this situation. For that therefore I thought of the name 'Icon', as it fitted with this concept effeciantly, I then began to construct extending the sizing of the letter 'I', as I was fascinated with the appeal of a single letter due to my background research on Q magazine, I mind mapped that the 'I' could reference to the 'Indie' genre the content of my product is focused upon. Under this instance drawing emphasis upon the 'I' could then be justiifed. Keeping with the 'Bebas Nevau' font style seen throughout my three productions for continuity reasons, I re-used this to incorporate the words of my masthead, the sizing was then enhanced to 160pt to draw the vast array of attention towards this as I needed essentially my audience to instantly recognise the title of my publication, similarly I kept to a traditional Q magazine colour palette by displaying a deep, pungent scarlet red as the overtone for the lettering themselves, this allowed it to be highlighted extremely effectively against the white backdrop and allowed it to be emphasised above all the remaining elements on the page. Still I was not pleased with how it perceived, I felt there was something I couldn't accurately distinguish 'not right' about the masthead, so under this impression I asked my lecturer over her thoughts of what I produced. Upon immediate inspection she told me I had to instantly alter it, from where she stands the whole publication now displayed as 'tacky'. Her cognitive processes around this was not related to the colour scheme, but the chosen font style and new name of the masthead, she believed 'Icon' did not co-operate efficiently as a title for an indie/alternative rock product, in fact she commented she would most likely see this on a pop/hip hop magazine instead as that name was most suited, 'Icon' did not relate to anything of my chosen genre. This was enough criticism in my respects to immeditelly begin to alternate what had been produced for the fear my cover could be undermined.
With the new conception of the masthead a definite no go, i ended up turning to my contents page for inspiration I had mostly finished the process of developing this before my cover as I had found it was the easier of the two tasks to work upon. As you can see on the right hand side of my desktop, I have the document of the contents open along side the one displaying my cover, this was so I could constantly compare between the two to ensure that my colour scheme matched and the layout was fairly accurate so as to prevent discontinuity. The masthead you can witness on the contents I constructed out of scratch to act as a template for where I wanted it positioned before I inserted in the fully completed and approved one, however during the production stages I came to love the masthead as I felt it corresponded well with the reminder of my conventions in the idea it did not look misplaced amongst them, yet it was still noticeable at the top of the page where it had been situated so it would be difficult to overlook it completely. As this was how I intended the title of my product to be perceived by the readers, to me it would be now most sensible to copy and paste it over onto the cover photo so it could be positioned into its correct location behind the male models hair. To conduct this straightforward method I used the 'cmd' and 'c' buttons to highlight the masthead so I now had a duplicate identity of it, then I proceeded to paste it onto the cover Photoshop programme by pressing 'cmd' and 'v' keys so its doppleganger could be now seen on the page. I adjusted the size of the rectangle and letters contained within it, so it was significantly larger in contrasts to most of the other elements (such as headline articles), as this would effectively illustrate its dominance. Furthermore, despite this what still could be noted was that the name of the artist 'Cypher' was larger in proportion to the masthead. this was a concept I wasn't entirely certain about as I was concerned my masthead should be bigger in relation to the main feature as ultimately this was the aspect selling my production to the reader - they had to effectively note which publication they would be purchasing and be able to relate that all stories are exclusive to 'Void' only and nothing else. When referring back to my lecturer to obtain her viewpoint over this stressful situation she too agreed that the masthead could be enhanced significantly, otherwise as a member of my target audience she could not clearly distinguish essentially the most important aspect of the cover (which undoubtly should be the masthead as this is the major selling point of any written media publication), yet it appeared the headline feature was occupying this dominance which made the masthead very difficult to locate and interpret. She recommended that I should divert moat of my attention to correcting this issue, otherwise it could fundamently impact the professionalism of 'Void' as compared to competing products of the same nature. The final area to consider was adjusting the sizing of the masthead itself so that it completely occupied the box from top to bottom, my lecturer strongly expressed that the pt placement used was too insignificant as it visually displayed my lettering of the title as small, therefore it made it more difficult to correctly reference to as what the masthead says. Furthermore due to this incompetence, the text was partially obscured by the models hair which made it efficiently more harder to relate to what the wording says, this was another factor that could potentially deter the reader if they could not decipher the name of my publication. In order for me to advance further in my development, it was critical I implemented and amended the advice I had been dealt, if not this may ultimately reduce the standard of my work to that of an undesired level.
Now that the two texts were presented side by side, I noticed that the blue inside the 'V' on the masthead was a unique shade as opposed to the blue incorporated into the name of the solo artist and the festival circle positioned on the right hand side of the cover. This was due to me having previously began work on the cover itself before that of the contents, however I had the dilemma of losing my cover templates on the main frames of the computer networks at college as I had used a different Mac to create it at another campus, therefore whilst I was awaiting to retrieve them I started work on the contents page which I had perfected before the matter, hence why the blue was different. As I loved the tone present on the contents more then that of the cover, I knew instantly the most sensible of options would be to 'colour swap' the blue from the masthead onto the blue areas of the articles that were still in their original colour. This way I would be able to efficiently establish the re-occuring continuity in the presentation as the readers will be able to notice that the same blue has been used on a proportion of the pages, this creates a distinct rhythm and flow within my work which makes it presumed as more professional and conventional in adhering to traditional magazine styles. To 'colour swap', I first had to highlight the text concerned, in this scenario 'Cypher' and click on the colour palette box present on its layer. As you can see above the colour palette then appears in an array of unique shades of blue, to ensure I get the identical one to the masthead, I kept this box open and moved my cursor over to the 'V' on the masthead, a pipette like icon then appeared. When I clicked this over the 'V', it automatically changed the colour box to that of the shade that had been selected, using this technique I was able to alternate the colours of both the artists name and the festival circle without any difficulties, so the continuity between the conventions was very evident in that respects.
After I got my college lecturer to review my work again, she still was highly discontent with the perception of the cover, what her main concern revolved around was the construction of the masthead which remained her underlying issue. She told me even with the box surrounding it to make it more bold against the other elements, she felt that everything was still competing for attention and this was off putting for her to look at as she, as an audience member, couldn't distinguish where exactly the masthead was because of the competiveness of the aspects surrounding it. In her expertise, she recommended the masthead should be significantly larger, more bold and located in an area where it would be easily accessible to the audience. In this case she contemplated I should restart my idea, the quickest least time consuming method I could conduct this in was removing the image I had inserted, manipulate all of the conventions on a blank document so they were positioned correctly, focusing on achieving the correct consistency for the masthead, then drag back in the photograph when all was complete. Above you can see on the right one of my original cover templates, whilst on the left this is the end result of the layout my lecturer had me create in preparation for the insertion of the male model again. The most significant difference orientates itself around the personification of the masthead which has been altered drastically since the stages above. I adhered to the red box as a method for me to gain the reader focus as it was an essential ploy to make the masthead more noticeable on the page, the red allowed itself to be dramatically emphasised on the white background, and with no other colour tone on the wording of the headlines ultimately as bright as this, I presumed the vast quantity of visual gaze would be directed to it on initial glance as compared to the other elements. My lecturer had recommended me to remove the blue 'V' and keep the palette of the masthead neutral by ensuring all of the adjascent letters were in the same tone as one another, in this case she implied everything should be white. This meant i was going towards a very similar concept as Q magazine, yet it was part of my task to draw inspiration from other pieces of real life media so my idea could be justified, this scheme specifically works well for Q and as we are both divulging in a white backdrop, the strength of the masthead colours are emphasised. This makes the red easily identifiable on the page along with the white of the text as it is illuminated vastly by the bright shade surrounding it, essentially it would be extremely difficult for the audience to overlook this easily, with it so emphatic as opposed to the more toned down, neutral palette of the headlines in its near vicinity. Importantly I kept the locations of all the accompanying conventions in their duplicate places from how they appeared on my previous shot of the cover (the text headings, main artist feature and festival circle are all in the same positions as seen previously) this was because me and my lecturer had no issue of where they were already situated as we both felt they all corresponded well together and did not appear overly out of place.
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