Feedback on New Digipak design

I uploaded my new digipak design on my deviantart account (http://www.deviantart.com/) and then uploaded to an 80s fan group named 'Back-to-the-1980s' as I thought this would be a good place to get decent feedback from members of my target audience.

The Logo of the group

A few days ago, I recieved some very positive feedback from a long term member of the group and this reassured me that my digipak was aimed at the right kind of people. I am not sure of his age, but by what he said in the comment he clearly was a teengaer in the 80s and highly appreciated my digipak...

Digipak uploaded on Deviantart

Comment from a male member of my target audience

Interscope Records

I used Wiki to help me decide on the record company who were likely to be interested in my products and if they would want to work with me. Michael Jackson was an artist who has strongly influenced my ideas and through Wiki, I found that he had done a lot of work with Epic Records, therefore I thought this would be a good record label to work with.

However, whilst doing my research into the New Jack Swing, I found that the founder of this genre, Teddy Riley, had worked with a variety of late 80s and New Jack Swing music artists for Interscope Records. Therefore I thought this would be a more suitable record company, as the kind of products I have produced are likely to generate interest from Teddy Riley. I realised that comparing my artist to Michael Jackson is very illogical, as he was a world wide known and highly successful music artist.

On the spine of my album digipak, I have typed Interscope Records in a small font, as this is how most of the record label’s names are presented on an album.

Teddy Riley (works for Interscope)

New Album Digipak design

New Magazine cover

Here is my new and improved magazine cover. Inspired by the 2006/2007 and special editions of Mojo magazine covers (mentioned in the slide share presentation), I used bright colours and cartoon/comic book effect.

The font I used was Showcard Gothic as this seemed appropriate to the 80s theme, had a distinctive appearance and was still easily readable. The 2007 magazine of Mojo with The Beatles on the front cover used distinctive fonts as well, which made the general design a little more interesting. I think the font I have chosen adds more to the visual effect.

Both with the Q and Mojo magazine, most issues usually had an image that dominated and was enlarged to take up most of the cover space. This image would obviously refer to one of the main articles inside the magazine. As you can see, I have done this with the image of Heidi and me.

I noticed that on various issues of magazines, sometimes the main picture would overlap with the magazine’s title/logo and on others it would not. When creating my magazine on Photoshop, I tried both ways, however I preferred it when the main picture was behind the main magazine title because then it did not cover up the text.

I think my magazine is challenging media conventions because it has a very different style to the most recent music magazines I have researched. The inspiration to make this design came from older issues of the magazines both standard and special edition. A lot of the more recent issues of the magazines use darker and basic colours schemes and particularly with the Q issues, the background tends to be white or grey. However I am using vibrant colours and a colourful background in order to create an artificial and retro appearance because this is my own unique style I am developing across my three products. This distinctive style of mine makes my products more recognisable to my target audience.

I posted this design on Facebook and recieved some feedback....

Although I recieved a lot of positive feedback and a lot of people said that it was a lot better than my original magazine, the bottom comment was the most important to me as Angela is a key member of my target audience. The fact that she'd 'definately buy it' was a big compliment, and it is satisfying to know that my magazine actually appeals to my target audience!

More Magazine Research

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

A2 media mag research

View more presentations from kingsalip.

Feedback and experimenting with fonts on my magazine cover

This is a third attempt at my magazine cover. I received a lot of positive feedback about my last cover. It was said that it looks very professional, colourful, interesting and most of all very 80s. However it was also said that it had too much of the same font and perhaps I needed to experiment more with the fonts to appeal to an older audience. Therefore in the images below I have tried various different fonts and hopefully from this selection I can pick out the final result of my magazine cover…



I kept the magazine title font as Super Black SF, and I kept the small sub headings as Balloonist SF. However for the main heading ‘The 80s are back!’ I changed this to the font, Bolts SF. I chose this font in particular because it looks very different and I think contrasts nicely with the other fonts on the cover. It also has quite a retro look about it which is suitable for the theme. The font is bigger, bolder and in my opinion more eye-catching.

As you can see I also used the Bolts SF font for ‘Michael Jameson talks about…’

I then tried out the font Sonic XBd BT (below) and I immediately disliked it. I found the words hard to read and it seemed completely out of place amongst everything else on the cover. I abandoned this font.

I then tried changing the font of the small sub headings in the red rectangles. I kept the Bolts SF font on the main headings and changed the small ones to Stylistic SF (below). Although I liked the font and it did seem appropriate to the genre of the magazine, this particular font does not make text stand out and it is very hard to see the sub headings in the red rectangles. I preferred the original font, Balloonist SF, therefore kept to this.

I then tried different coloured backgrounds, as this was suggested by a member of my target audience...

None of these above I like, although I want the magazine to be colourful, all of these to me just look tacky and amateur. Therefore I am going to attempt a different approach on this magazine cover. Claire Dymond said that in order to appeal to an older audience, as well as a younger audience, I need to re-consider the general cartoony appearance. This will be my next step.

Improvements on my magazine cover according to feedback

Here is my second attempt at my magazine cover. Personally I think the white background makes a huge difference and it generally looks more professional as a magazine cover.

The small subtitles I have put on the top and bottom of the magazine are various things that I have stumbled across during my 80s music research and thought would be appropriate to have in my magazine is this were to be published.

The Rewind Festival Line-up

The Rewind Festival is an 80s themed music festival that brings back classic 80s stars and gives them a chance to perform in front of a huge audience. This is something that my target audience would certainly be interested in, particularly those who were alive in the 80s and appreciated the popular music. Also, younger members of my target audience, who like 80s music now, may also be interested in the Rewind Festival, however this will be a small minority.

The Real M.Jackson?

Michael Jackson’s new album, Michael came out recently, which supposedly contained songs which Michael made before he died. However, there has been many debates about whether it is actually the real Michael Jackson singing or not and I thought an article discussing this topic in my magazine would hopefully generate a lot of interest from my target audience. Michael Jackson was a popular 80s music artist as well as New Jack Swing artist, so his fans would probably be interested in the article. I know that this new album of his has appealed to younger members of my target audience as well as several of my peers have bought this album. It is generated much discussion amongst them, therefore hopefully an article about this in my magazine will appeal to them also.

Bobby Brown’s The Masterpiece

Bobby Brown is considered more of a New Jack Swing star, however he was very popular during the late 80s and he has just released his new album, The Masterpiece which contains many of his 80s hits. The New Jack Swing fans, which are part of my target audience, will be appealed to an article like this, as Bobby was named The King of New Jack Swing.

What happened to Kid Creole?

Kind Creole and The Coconuts was a popular 80s funk band, who is performing in this years Rewind Festival. They have had many recent successes, but perhaps have not had as much mainstream press and attention as someone like Rick Astley as had.

Feedback

I posted the magazine on Facebook and tagged people in it of all ages, so I could get a variety of different comments. Hopefully, this will provide me with enough information to help me improve my magazine cover.

I recieved comments from a variety of people...

I posted the magazine on Facebook and tagged people in it of all ages, so I could get a variety of different comments. Hopefully, this will provide me with enough information to help me improve my magazine cover.

These were very useful comments; in particular the ones from Angela Paskins and Claire Dymond as these two people are part of my target audience. Thomas Paskins, although he is more familiar with New Jack Swing music, he is not a huge fan of any type of R&B or pop music, so he really is not part of my target audience.

In the next post, I experiment with various different fonts (as suggested by Claire Dymond) and background colour (as suggested by Angela Paskins).