Magazine cover/Poster

Our ideas for the black and white background and the TV around Tom's face all went according to plan. We decided to put Tom's face in the TV as in the lyrics, one of the lines is "and is it real like those girls on TV", which gave us an image of surrealism and abstract, therefore we wanted to show this in the poster. We thought that, stereotypically, people would expect Bryony's head to be in the TV as she is the girl, but we went against that stereotype and mixed it up with Tom's head.
By putting Tom's head in the TV and making the background black and white, we had to work with the layers and make new ones then merge them etc. It was a long proccess but eventually it was done and we're very proud of how it's come out.
In the end, we decided that we should have TV written down the side of the TV as it would look better than either side. We made the font a purple/pink to contrast against the black and white background, and to link with Bryony's tights so there werent too many different colours on the magazine cover/poster.
The font we used for the band name and title of the song was used as it looks retro and rough, as the band is supposed to be percieved as rough around the edges and indie. We found the font on www.dafont.com and just changed the size to make it fit the structure of the poster, and as we needed the band title bigger than anything else on the page.
We then needed to think of a font for the tour dates, when the tour dates would be, where they would be, where to put them on the page and how they would fit around the other things going on on the magazine cover/poster. We decided on a font again from www.dafont.com that was memorable and slightly American. We liked this font as it has 2 different ways that come up, for example the "2010" on the poster looks transparent and the word "TOUR" looks is in white. We decided on white for most of our fonts as we thought it stood out from the black and white background but didnt take the attention away from the band members and "out now" banner. We decided on when the tour dates would be by writing in random dates for next year all in the spring/summer time, and we decided on the location by typing in in Google "arenas in UK" and chose from the long list.
At first we put the tour dates at the bottom of the page in a small font on the right hand side of Tom, but we then realised, and from feedback by our peers, that it wasn't standing out and wasn't really noticeable compared to the other happenings on the page so we decided to merge it into the frame more. We came up with the idea of slanting the tour dates by playing around with it and trying it in different ways, and chose the slanting idea as we thought it looked the best, running through the band members. We thought that it was a good place to put them as when the reader looks at the band members, the tour dates are immediately shown.
Like all reputable band posters, we chose to have a review from a well-known magazine, so we chose NME. We decided on the review by thinking of reviews we had seen before, and Tom thought of best newcomers, as Girls on TV would be Apollo Stations' new single! By adding on NME's review, it made the magazine cover/poster more realistic and like any other we had seen and researched.
We also used stars in the review to show the reader how good the song was and how it was rated by NME. As it was given 5 stars, we thought it might stand more of a chance of being bought, as we in the group have learnt this from past experience.
We also researched the font for the hmv logo and found it on Google after typing in "hmv logo font". It was easy to find, but we had to guess the colour for it. In the end we decided to have the same colour as the 5 stars and the word "TV". We added in the hmv logo as it's a very up to date, well known music and DVD store, which young people of today go in to buy their music and music technology. By associating our magazine cover/poster with hmv, we thought it'd draw more attention to it and open more to a wider range of readers.
By adding an "out now" banner, we thought it would show the readers that it was ready to buy now, as if it was what they had been waiting for. We put it in yellow and red so it was the brightest thing on the page, therefore telling the readers to grab the album as it may not be there long. We think the colours and font (which we used for the tour dates and reviw) work really well, as yellow and red clash, and the diagonal banner looks like a real one that is used in real magazine covers/posters of today. As we haven't used those colours anywhere else in the magazine cover/poster, it really captures the attention of the reader, and makes it unmissable that the album is out, which is ultimately what we want - sales of our single.
We are overall very pleased with our magazine cover/poster as it has taken a lot of time and effort, but it is certainly worth it. It really showed off our technology capabilities and by tweaking bits here and there we have really paid attention to the smallest of detail in all the right places.