As previously mentioned in an earlier blog, I was asked to create the visual media for our group. I wanted to play on our characters professional golfing career as I found this a good place to start to show our audience that he was a professional golfer. Therefore I decided to feature him on the front of a golfing magazine. Although it would have been easier for me to insert a picture of our character into an already made template of an existing golf/sports magazine. I wanted to create the magazine myself to show the creative thought process of our character. To do this I had to do a lot of research into existing golf magazines to gain ideas for layout, content and visual style. Therefore I started looking at magazines such as “Golf monthly”, “Cycle sport” and “Sports illustrated”. I found that researching these kinds of magazines was key for the process mainly because I am they least sporty person ever. But also that through choice I have never read any kind of sports magazine before in my life. After looking through the front covers I found that there was one key element, which stood out through the majority of them. This was the main photo featured on the front page, as the majority of them were actions shots. Such as pictures of golfers mid swing, or cyclists pedaling as fast as they can. I found that this was a very effective visual for the reader but also immediately categorized the magazine into the sport genre. All genres have conventions and I believe action photographs are one of sports magazines conventions. The next element I noticed was the colour scheme, which mainly consisted of blues, reds and greens. These are all colours, which can be associated with men and masculinity. These have been specifically chosen as men are there target audience, therefore they wouldn’t be using colours such as pink and purple as then the target audience would be unclear. I then looked at aspects such as headlines, anchorage text, strap lines and many other elements that make up a front cover to decide what I wanted to use on my own piece. I found that when making the first draft I took different elements from each magazine that I had found and by doing this felt that my front cover didn’t really fit together very well because I was taking ideas from so many different sources. I then presented my first draft to the group, gained feedback off them and then went back and improved the front cover. Also by the time I got to doing the second draft we had gathered the actual photos of our character “Luke Johnson”. Therefore replaced the amateur photo of myself with his picture. Below is the final draft of the magazine cover, along with some of the magazine I researched and gained inspiration from. You will be able to pick up on elements that I “gained inspiration from” and see how I’ve incorporated them in my own piece.
. David Bird Media . 