ROUGH covers

   




    So now that I have a solid magazine genre, as well as an idea for my two page spread, I thought it would be a good idea to start making VERY rough cover designs. Many of the covers I see for dance magazines are very simple. There is not a lot on it. Typically there is a dancer or dancers showing incredible technique looking directly at the camera with very few taglines around them. The dancer is the always the main subject of the cover. Even the mastheads are simple, and typically not very bold or bright. The backgrounds are a solid color, but typically not white, promoting sophistication and eloquence while drawing attention solely to the subject of the magazine. Very rarely is the background white because they are not trying promote an emptiness or blankness.  Examples are provided to the left from Dance Magazine.


So I created a couple of very rough drafts of the covers layouts as well as masthead examples. I was just playing around with different handwriting styles, but I realize that a lot of them are not possible, nor would they look good for the dance magazine. As I stated in my first blog post, it appears that the target audience is females of a middle to high socio -economic status (to clarify this I emailed the vice president of Dance Magazine to ask for the average age of their subscribers, which fell into this range almost exactly). I am trying to appeal to a little younger of audiences that are still in the same socio-economic status, with the primary gender still being females. I would like to appeal to girls about the ages of 12-28. To do so I will still use a plain background, but I will add more taglines, as well as use a younger model to appeal to the younger audience. Also, my magazine's masthead will not be crazy or over the top, but it will be a little more colorful/fun as compared to Dance Magazine. Personally I like cover layout #2 the best and Masthead #1/ 3/ and 10 the best and will try to find fonts that match these when I actually start working. Please excuse the scratching out, the scribbles, the poor lighting, as well as the poor quality photos taken by my iPhone 4s. Again these are very rough drafts that I plan to revise throughout, and then when I actually start working with the program, see which of these are possible.

Until next blog- Taylor Barton

Citations
"Dance Magazine." Dance Magazine. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Mar. 2016.