Media Product - Fair Play magazine

Below are my final magazine page templates including: a front cover for the first issue, a letter from the editor, an example feature page, a previews page anda reviews page. Each contains my own written work artwork and photography, some images however, like game screenshots had to be found. The magazine pages were created using the program Adobe Photoshop CS3, making use of the stock fonts, shapes and some colour schemes.

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Front cover sources: Barcode from www.officialnintendomagazine.co.uk/article.php?id=16389

Editor's letter sources:
http://image.shutterstock.com/display_pic_with_logo/10629/10629,1187014026,1/stock-photo-noise-on-old-tv-screen-retro-television-concept-no-signal-4545907.jpg

Feature sources:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/5407490.stm

Previews page images and sources:
http://uk.media.ds.ign.com/media/142/14286495/imgs_4.html
http://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/nR48Ll934oyuhjANoCz-4-ANa2ZLbYPK#images
http://www.rockstargames.com/reddeadredemption/screens
http://www.rockstargames.com/reddeadredemption/info
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Dead_Redemption
http://redsteelgame.uk.ubi.com/red-steel-2/?page=medias§ion=1
http://uk.gamespot.com/psp/rpg/kingdomheartsbirthbysleep/images.html?om_act=convert&om_clk=gsimage&tag=images%3Bheader%3Bmore

Reviews page sources and images:
http://www.officialnintendomagazine.co.uk/article.php?id=16142
http://www.godofwar.com/en_GB/index.htm#Downloads
http://www.winterbottomgame.com/
http://uk.gamespot.com/ds/action/aliceinwonderland/images/0/2/
http://uk.gamespot.com/wii/adventure/calling/images/0/93/
http://finalfantasy-xiii.net/final-fantasy-xiii/screenshots.php

David Carson

David Carson is an American graphic designer, best known for his innovative magazine design and use of experimental typography. He art directed various music, skateboarding and surfing magazines through the 1980s and most famously the style magazine "Ray gun" (1992-5). His layouts featured distortions or mixes of "venacular" typefaces and fractured imagery.

Plazm is a design and culture magazine which has been published by a collective of designers since 1991 . The image to the left is a cover design by David Carson for issue 16 (1997) of the magazine.

The cover is very simplistic, the photo is the main focus which is very hard to understand, a convention of Carson's style. The Image appears to be of a man's head in a waste paper basket, concealed by a newspaper. The framing is closed as due to the dark lighting it is very difficult to see any of the background. The object in the bin is possibly a manakin's head and wig, but Carson does successfully achieve a realistic perspective. The combed back hair of the head, suggests sophistication, and put into context with the wastepaper bin and newspaper, cultural connotations suggest it is a business/office worker. What is also interesting about the newspaper is that none of the text is legible as this is not meant to give meaning or context to the picture, making it more difficult to give deeper meaning to the image.

The smaller heading under the title suggests the subject of the picture and possibly alludes to material inside the magazine. "No more heroes" suggests that the head in the bin is that of one of these heroes, an office worker, who has been discarded and disposed of.

The lowercase text, white in colour and very bold, stands out against the dark background photo. The text, although distorted, is still readable as the first section of the title is higher than the second, leading the eye to read the top part first.

Sources:

http://www.davidcarsondesign.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Carson_(graphic_designer)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plazm_(magazine)
http://www.plazm.com/magazine/back-issues/plazm-16

Herbert Bayer

Herbert Bayer was an Austrian Graphic designer born in 1900 to 1985, widely recognised as the last living member of the Bauhaus; a school in Germanythat combined crafts and the fine arts and was famous for the approach to design it publicized and taught. While at the school Bayer was appointed as director of the new printing and advertising workshop, to open when the school moved to the city of Dessau in April 1925.

Bayer instituted the lowercase alphabet as the style for all Bauhaus printing, he also founded "universal", a geometric sans-serif font with simple curves. It combined upper and lowercase characters into a single character set and has inspired many other typefaces.

Bayer also designed the signage for Bauhaus' new building complex in Dessau which inspired "Bayer sans" by Victory type.

It was useful for me to research the background of typography in order to understand the context and styles of certain fonts. What typeface is used in media products is important as it too, portrays and creates a certain mood and context just like any other form of visual communication. For example the Bauhaus sign is a modernist, minimalist design, representing what the school taught.

Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bauhaus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Bayer
http://www.type.nu/bayer/index.html

Page pattern designs

Following my research on magazines, in particualr video games magazines I found that sections, not including special features, are colour coded and all have similar layouts. Taking inspiration from Official Nintendo magazine which uses a pattern and colour scheme to define which sections contain information about the DS and Wii I have created a similar pattern to define which pages contain information on certain consoles. The patterns I have created utilise the extrinsic knowledge the audience has about colour in relation to consoles through their packaging, colour schemes and advertising campaigns which enables the viewer to visually make a connection between the two, thus defining what the page contains.

The final design carries on the floral theme set in the logo, as the audience likes continuity as well as the purple and white colour scheme specified for the magazine. Adobe Photoshop CS3 was again used with use of the gradient tool to make the colour scheme more sophisticated and less childish. The colours representing each consoles are petals of the flower and the stem is the colour scheme of the magazine, implying that the magazine is at the centre of news and events in gaming.

Logo development and final design

For the final stage in the creation of a logo, I have created 12 developed designs following the ideas I produced in previous posts. I used Adobe Photoshop CS3, a graphics tablet and again the stock shapes and stock font explored in the ideas posts. The logos have been annotated which shows the thought processes and positive and negative aspects of each.

The final design was chosen as I believe it has a good balance between sharp and soft shapes and bright, attractive colours. The logo is unique and very simple which will grab the attention of people and women in particular.

Logo Ideas

After initially drawing some of my font ideas by hand I decided that it would be faster and simpler to use stock fonts available in Adobe Photoshop CS3. By using Adpbe Photoshop I was able to practise with the program I will use to create my media product and also experiment with enhancing the logo with tools like "drop shadow" and "gradient overlays". In the first part of the ideas generation process I have been able to find a font and colour which will be used in my logo (see annotations for explanations).

I next took my initial idea of adding a pattern behind the text to make the text stand out and appeal more to women and created a collage of shapes, floral shapes (feminine), which will be added to the text in the development stage.

This collage is a mixture of stock floral shapes and ones I have drawn myself using a graphics tablet. I particularly experimented with gradient overlays in attempt to get a metallic texture, I think that the pattern in the background of the text should be brightly coloured in contrast to the black text on the logo, making it stand out more. I particularly like the large red pattern in terms of shape as it is very sharp, almost like razors, and yet a feminine form. This conforms with the font of the logo. The colour and metallic sheen however will have to be developed further and I will look at whether a block bold colour will compliment the text and theme more than a pastel, harmonised scheme. As well as gradient overlays, I also experimented with drop shadows, inner shadows, outer glows and inner glows, the results of which can be particularly seen towards the left side of the page. These tools accent the shapes and may be implemented during the development stage.

Title Ideas and logo designs

As a starting point in the creation of my magazine I have generated some ideas for titles for it (see below). These may not make alot of sense but the spider diagram somewhat shows my process of thinking, I began by jotting down words which are associated with women and femininity followed by words associated with video games. I also specifically considered words to do with equality and diversity as the aim of the magazine is to promote a confidence in women and acceptence in men that women are on an equal footing in terms of games knowledge and interest.

The Final choice for the title of the magazine: "Fair Play" is very simple and easy to remember and accurately captures what the magazine represents. The first word fair promotes this equality ideology but can also be interpreted as a description commonly applied to women e.g. "the fairer sex", which all women can relate to. The second word, play obviously means the playing of video games.

Accompanied with the title I also came up with some ideas for slogans with the final choice being "Surpass man: be a female gamer". This specifically functions to get women more involved in gaming and attempts to make women feel more comfortable about playing what are perceived as "male games" by presenting it as a competition; a useful device in advertising as many enjoy competition between sexes. This slogan will be placed above the title on the front page and together they create an identity for the magazine which women can relate to and recognise easily amongst other products.

The initial Ideas below, drawn by hand, are a starting point and I will next create more sophisticated ideas using Adobe Photoshop and develop them further.

Media Product Brief and Specification

Following my research into the magazine industry and before I begin work on my own magazine design I will outline my aims and specification for the product I wish to create.

Brief

I will create a gaming magazine aimed at women aged 16 to 40 in an attempt to get women more involved in gaming and educate them on high quality games and gaming products available. Therefore all consoles will be covered. The magazine should create a comfortable, unpatronizing environment and community in which the audience can form their own opinions and contribute to the magazine. The Product should contain a front cover, a letter from the editor, a news page template, a previews title page and page template, a reviews title page and page template.
Click Image to view in full

Official Nintendo magazine, Issue 54, April 2010

Official Nintendo Magazine is a monthly release by Nintendo which covers both of the companies consoles; The Wii and DS. I feel it is important to analyse this magazine as it is very popular and reaches a very wide audience, from 10 to 40 year olds, males and females, successfully.

Click Images to view annotations
Image Sources: Scanned fron Official Nintendo Magazine Issue 54, front cover from ONM website: http://www.officialnintendomagazine.co.uk/

Girl Gamer magazine, the changing market and exclusion of women.

In 2006 women accounted for a third of UK gamers and brought the fact that women in gaming was presented as an alien phenomena, in magazines in particular, to the forefront of debates. The number of women gaming continues to grow which in particular can be accredited to the extensive marketing of Nintendo products targeted at women while other major companies such as Sony and Microsoft fail to do so. Within Nintendo's marketing strategy however we see that women are singled out and still discussed as a seperate entity, this is particularly evident within magazines such as "Nintendo Official magazine" which follow the companies strategies. This has created a perception "that women who play male-dominated games are going to be ignored, shouted down or chatted up by men they will be playing against" (Kirsten Kearney) which has not yet been overcome through equal, un-separatist promotion, to allow more women to feel comfortable playing "male games".

Within media such as magazines there are many visual codes which emphasise this separation of female and male games and most do not clearly acknowledge the existence of female gamers at all as their pages are adorned with demeaning images of half naked women in adverts. Companies are prone to stereotyping women, for exapmle releases of pink consoles like the Ds Lite and earlier the Playstation 2. This is also evident within game releases, games targetted specifically at women include "Wii Fit" as women apparently have an obsession with losing weight and "Cooking Mama" for all those budding housewives out there. On top of this a perception that only younger girls will play games has appeared which has seen an increase in party and games like "Mario Party" and simple strategy games like the "Imagine" series forcing producers of games to feed the masses with lower quality material. Puzzle games for older audiences who wouldn't normally play games, specifically women, have also saturated the market not allowing the new audience to beome more involved in games and other genres which are of higher quality.

An attempt to crack the problem of a lack of women gamers by Nintendo came in the form of "Girl Gamer" magazine in 2008, a free magazine apperaing in issues of "Mizz" and "Bliss". What is fundamentally wrong with this is that "Bliss and "Mizz" will only attract an audience of teenage girls aged 12 - 15, not exactly universally solving the problem of the exclusion of women. The magazine, much like the adverts targeting females, was frilly, pink and fluffy promoting the low quality rubbish stated above with demeaning content in terms of an expected ignorance of games.

Women need a magazine, made by gaming women, to encourage them to play games which don't involve 1940's ideals of raising children, cooking and puzzles which would be significantly cheaper if played on a newspaper. The audience needs to be educated that women can enjoy any genre of game like they enjoy any genre of film and men who argue against the incorporation of women into "their" world need to know this and stop living in the past. The magazine needs to be opinionated, not pandering to the wishes of companies, allowing women to form their own educated opinions and feel confident in articulating them whilst enjoying a whole spectrum of games from "beat-em-ups" to "Role playing games", "First Person shooters" to "Strategy" games.

Sources used: BBC News "All women gamers, please stand up" http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/5407490.stm
Future Publishing:"Future and Panini link up for second issue of Girl Gamer"

http://www.futureplc.com/2008/01/30/future-and-panini-link-up-for-second-issue-of-girl-gamer/

WomenGamers.com "Gaming magazine ads: Failing the female market

http://www.womengamers.com/articles/editorials/gaming-magazine-ads-failing-female-market/

Magazine cover: http://images.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://kotaku.com/assets/resources/2008/01/girlgamercover.jpg&imgrefurl=http://kotaku.com/350532/win-imagine-babies-from-girl-gamer-mag&usg=__u5VEpsvhV2JAy-j9dOJUag093oY=&h=657&w=463&sz=105&hl=en&start=2&um=1&itbs=1&tbnid=TrkXZuJa-V9D2M:&tbnh=138&tbnw=97&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dgirl%2Bgamer%2Bmagazine%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN%26rls%3Dcom.microsoft:en-gb:IE-SearchBox%26tbs%3Disch:1

Photography - Bridlington 1/4/2010

As I enjoyed photographing landscapes in a previous project I decided doing this blog would be a good opportunity to practise photography and evaluate what I have done. I chose Bridilington, a seaside town on Yorkshire's east coast as the location of the shoot as the sea, cliffs and harbour makes for some great scenery. I used Adobe Photoshop CS3 to enhance some of the attributes of the photos such as brightness, contrast, shadows and highlights.

This photo was taken on Bridlingon's south beach at the side of the sea wall, the tide was very far out leaving behind a strip of rockpools. The framing is open as the viewer is aware the landscape will carry on outside the scope of the photograph. The Angle at which this photograph was taken is very interesting, the red lines highlight the main composition of the photo, the wall which immediately grabs the attention of the viewer, leads the eye towards the central point which in turn meets the horizon line. The light beacon in the distance is the central focus in the photograph however the eye is led to other detail such as the sharp shapes of the rocks which border the wall. What I also liked about the picture is the sharp angle the light makes (highlighted in green) which compliments the line and angle of the wall.

The colour and tone of the photograph is very earthy and natural with the blue of the sky, reflected in some of the puddles on the ground, and the black of the seaweed creating interesting accents of colour. The seaweed is particularly interesting as it forms a perfect line as to where the sea level reaches up the wall, much like the markers on a swimming pool, as well as perfectly covering the rugged rocks.

This second photo was taken at the harbour, again a sharp edge, this time of the pier leads the eye outwards in its direction, the pier acts as a sort of frame for the main focus of the photo, the boats in the centre. Again openly framed with the viewers eye, level with the horizon, an interesting factor of the photo is that there are two horizon lines, one is the sea wall in the background and the other behind that; the sea.

The number and size sequencing of the central boats is its main attraction, and what is immediately apparent to the viewer. It looks very tidy as the boats laid next to each other get less in number the further into the distance which is complimentary to the rule that things get smaller the further they are away. This is emphasised by the structure of crab nets above the boats.

The colour and tone is much brighter in this photo, giving a warmer feel with a palette of bright primary colours and earthy ones like the brown mud. The contrast of light and shadow particularly of that created by the crab nets is very detailed and adds interest to the photo.