Magazine Development

 This blog will be where I put all ideas for my magazines, for example, masthead, possible layouts and ideas I could use. This will also be where I can review and reflect on decisions that I've kept or changed.

Blue text is my final reflection, aka my reflection from after I've completed the magazine & they're also updates on what I've chosen & why.

Possible Mastheads in order of how likely I am to choose them:

1. Deutsche Auto!
2. Auto Nachrichten
3. The GER
   
4. German Imports
5. Das Automobil
6. Wöchentliches Auto

I think that using the German words would make that magazine seem to be entirely in German, so that might detract the magazine for some of my potential viewers who are young English speaking Indonesians However I think that the word "Deutsche" & "Auto" are quite easy to understand so it has a good chance. But I think Auto Nachrichten can also work because it might look good to use on a cover, and it has a nice ring to it, but it might be hard to pronounce for those who don't know how to. Additionally, Deutsche Auto & Auto Nachrichten are quite straight forward names, meaning German Auto(mobiles) & Auto(mobile) News respectively, and they both connote that the content will have German cars

I've chosen Deutsche Auto for my final work as its simple to read, understandable even to an English speaking Indonesian as Deutsche is widely known to mean German & "Auto" has a similar counterpart in Indonesian and has the direct same meaning in English, other than that it has a nice ring to it.

Masthead Fonts:

1. Belleza
2. ITC Bauhaus
3. Ahsing
4. Barbra SemiCondensed 
5. Bukhari Script
6. Bodoni FLF
7. Horizon

Number 1, 2, 4 & 6 are my current favorites but I'll have to see after I make a mock up of what I might want my magazine to look like, and depending on the kind of photos I might want to use. Also what feel I'm trying to get, for example 1, 3 and 6 is quite classy, so I could target a high income demographic while no 4 seems quite stylized & probably more balanced, it also reminds me of the late 70s early 80s psychedelic rock scene which is also coincidentally around the time the E30 was developed & first produced. Maybe I could get a "cool" feel to the cover.

For the font, I've decided to go with Barbra SemiCondensed (4) because my final front cover has a unique color, meaning I should have a unique font to go with it, because I wanted to break conventions and make my magazine contrast by making the borders darker toned. I've gotten this by primary research as I walked by a place selling magazines in the airport and I noted that a very large amount of magazines had bright colored borders.

Layouts:

1. 

For this design, I want to have the Masthead on top & have the main coverline slash across the front cover, past the margins. I also want to have a banner, but I cant decide how much space I want it to take, but using rule of thirds, I think 3/4 of a third is good. The main images will be of a BMW e30 M3 or just any e30 3 series, the first will be a head on shot while the second is a shot that shows the side and some of the front as well so that there is more detail shown but only enough, using Barthes' hermeneutic code, revealing just enough but leaving things like the rear end of the car not revealed, hopefully dragging the reader to buying the magazine to see what its really like.

2. 

On this particular draft, I wanted the banner to take a whole third of the poster but this time it'd be landscape, this is advantageous because I know my Camera (sony a6000)'s maximum resolution is a ratio of 4:6, which is more square in shape, so the banner taking a third would allow me to use a larger amount of the photo. For the image itself, I will have it stretch from left to right, no margins & the subject (car) should only be on the center third of the screen because I want to leave the top blank in order for it to be a bright sky or black sky, this makes it easier for me to contrast the masthead on it, but the shot might be hard to get because there's probably always at least one cloud to ruin the photo.

3. 

This draft is focused more on the car & the things on the banner can definitely be changed if I have a spontaneous idea, but for the shot itself, I want a close up of the headlight of the car, leaving only some space on the bottom so that i can fit in the masthead, for this one I think a sans serif font would work better than a serif one, unless the masthead has to be stacked, then I think a serif one might look better. Besides that this one has high potential but I think that the banner needs some change and the German flag could be changed to be half German and half British just to show that the magazine is not in German but only contains German content from afar.

In my final magazine, I've chosen the 1st option, however with some alterations because it was the most convenient for me to choose as I had recently visited a car meet where I took shots that of the E30 BMW that I knew I could use for my magazine, but the changes were firstly, that I've changed the contents of the banner to show some of the cars featured in the magazine instead of having it be puffs & captions. Secondly I've changed the bottom photo to be the one of the head on shot of the E30, while the top was changed to a picture of a 300sl Mercedes replica because I thought of a coverline which reinforces the idea of a rivalry between Mercedes and BMW, in addition to the changing main images, I thought it'd be a nice touch to overlap the cars over the main coverline strike because in my genre there's a lot of conventions of overlapping text with an insert. Lastly, I've changed where the barcode is located to the bottom left of the main image.

Layouts Real Draft:

Layout 3: 

I have chosen to first do a draft of layout 3 because I had the opportunity to get a shot that fit the description of layout 3. I quite like the left side of the cover if you ignore the Banner. This was my first attempt so I didn't think it looked too bad at the time but after creating a draft of layout 1, I realised that the banner and its contents don't look very appealing and due to its varying margins, it also looks quite amateurish, not to mention the fonts uniform, none are the same size. However the usage of the drop shadow on the Masthead is quite nice and I did like the touch of making the drop shadow of 'EN' from the word 'Nachrichten' turn a darker shade that contrasts the banner as it hits it. Besides that I think that the fonts I've chosen for the main coverline and the masthead fit quite nicely with the color and the feel even though they are different fonts. 

Layout 1: 

Although I liked the masthead on my layout 3 attempt, I think this one has more soul to it & it radiates the same energy as the color palette of the front cover does, but as for now I still haven't found a suitable coverline or usage for the banner, because when I did put the boxout with the caption similar to the one on my layout 3 draft, my teacher suggested against it because it didn't fit my conventions or the style of magazine I was trying to go for.

My final magazine cover did use the same layout as layout 1, but I have changed the idea of using the banner to put text to a place where I put inserts and overlap them with words about how they're featured in the text.