Flat Plans

The front cover that I have designed has aspects of Top of the Pops and Mizz magazine. This means that this pop magazine will catch the right target audiences eyes. This front cover has the main image in the centre with eye contact towards the audience, this is a very important aspect to make a connection with the audience.



The name of the masthead was out of five possible choices –
• Pop It!
• Burst
• What's Popin'
• Pop Babes
• Star

To get a better understand of which one I should use I asked the people in my class which they preferred for a pop magazine. I did this by asking around and tallying it up, coming to the conclusion that ‘Pop It!” and “Burst” were equally as good. When starting to draw my flat plans I liked the idea of “Burst” more as there were more things I could do when creating the magazine. I feel that when drawing this I thought of balloons and them bursting, giving the idea to write it as though the letters were about to pop. Therefore, giving off two meanings as it is also a pop magazine. When having a look on http://www.dafont.com/ I found three that I could have used, however, the second one I edited to get the marks as though it looked like it was about to burst and realised that this would make a lot of unneeded hassle throughout my work so I decided against it. The first one compared to the third one looked a lot more like something you would see on a pop magazine and so I decided to go for that one. The font is called “Billo Dream” which is the font I will want to use in the masthead and in other areas of the magazine throughout.


The font that I want to use for the main sells is going to be sans-serif ‘Trebuchet MS’ as I want it to look less formal which will give a friendlier feel towards its audience when they read it. All of this is something that I noticed when looking at the other pop magazines I have mentioned. This is the font I would that I want to use, it is very clear, making it easy for people to read which is important when appeal to a younger audience. This font looks very informal making the audience feel more like they are friends with the magazine and therefore creating a relationship with its readers. Another font that I want to use is ‘Arial’ for the less important things that I don’t want to catch the reader’s eye as much like the date of release, the issue number and the price. I want these to be fairly small so it doesn’t distract the audience away from the main sells and images.

Looking at the front cover there are 10 main sells, which is roughly the same as the magazines that I have analysed, give or take. This means that it fits in with the image of a pop magazine front cover and therefore likely to attract the right audience. These main sells include buzz words such as “exclusive” and “top tips” which catch the reader’s attention. Along with the buzz words this magazine design has double figure numbers which makes it feel like it is a packed issue with lots of things going on inside, there are words such as “ur” which is part of mode of address and the way the text speaks to its audience, along with being slang which teenagers can relate to thinking that the magazine is up to date with all the latest information. There are a few images on here which break up the text from the main sells which I feel is needed for a magazine for this age group. The strip line across the bottom tells the reader straight away what to expect within the magazine which helps them to decide whether to buy it and also adds to this packed magazine feel.

Moving on to the contents page that I have designed for my magazine, the bursting theme from the font “Billo Dreams” has followed on from the front cover. This makes the magazine flow better from one page to the next making it look less disjointed. Starting from the top you can see in the right hand corner an image which will be of the editor of the magazine, and a small text box. This will be a short paragraph just to explain to readers what is going on in the magazine. This helps the connection between the magazine and the audience even more. There are quite a lot of images on this page which is what I wanted to create to appeal to the audience that are targeted as they are most likely going to want to see quite a lot of pictures and not too much writing, especially on a contents page. The way that this page is designed makes it easy for the reader to know what page to go to depending on what they are interested in. With the fairly big boxes with text in, to the images which I feel do enough explain by themselves.

All of these images and text boxes have a page number next to them so the audience know where to find them, these numbers will be in the “Billo Dream” font to link the number to the heading on the page they want to go to. Not all of the pages are shown on this page but I don’t feel that is necessary as the reader is most likely going to pick the magazine up from the main sells on the front cover. The contents page will highlight some of the things on the front cover and include extras that weren’t on there. The fact that some of the images and text will be in circles and not all in rectangles adds to the imagination and creation of the page.

There is an advert/campaign in the bottom right hand corner of the page, I think that this will be changed every issue to put across concerns that need to be raised for people of the age group that are buying this magazine. I wanted to get across the idea of bullying in this issue. Other things can be used in there such as child abuse and sexual relationships as the target audience relates to those early on in puberty who might be confused about such things. I feel that this adds a sense of security between the magazine and its readers because if they are suffering from any troubles such as some mentioned above then there is an email or hotline that they can go to. The reason for it being in a magazine is going to be a lot more effective then it being on a billboard or newspaper as this isn’t something they are likely to pay attention to. The advert however will not be too big, it doesn’t want to be the main reading point of this page as it doesn’t happen to the majority of people but is clear enough for people to see.

The double page spread for my magazine is something slightly different to what I have analysed, it is an interview with an artist which is something that I wanted to do as I have seen that true stories within magazines like these take up a double page spread I didn’t see why an interview couldn’t. To make this more like a young audience pop magazine though I have made sure that there are a lot of pictures of the artist which will attract the reader’s eye. The text is colour coded for the interviewer and the interviewee which I feel makes it a lot easier for a younger person to want to read it as it doesn’t look daunting like reading a newspaper. I will be using my font “trebuchet MS” for this as this is my main font throughout my magazine.

The colours throughout this magazine design will be in pink, purple, yellow, blue and white. This, along with the fonts, will make the magazine flow a lot better giving a chance for the reader to enjoy the experience of this magazine a lot more as it will not feel disjointed and some parts being out of place.