Cover Development

In my magazine, I want the feature cover piece to be an illustrative cover based on breeding racehorses. Race horses are bred by breeding past winners of the sport to try and get the genetics of the winning ways of horses to pass down through generations. Some horses can be related to up to 9 winners. Obviously this covers intention is to be a striking image that is to draw in spectators of the sport that normally wouldn't look twice.

Development of design:

The basic idea on paper

Montage of photographs compiled together of past winners in illustrator.

Ussing silhoette, applied color palette to horse in a seperate layer in photoshop

Blending of colours using opacity levels

Background applied to the image. This is just a phototrace in illustrator bought into photohop and placed behind the image.

Illustrator file behind the drawing, changed opacity to have horses seeping through.

Playing with brightness levels to get a good balance between the two images.

Another version of the same image with the illustrator images 'stitched together' as an experiment.

Put into context with the cover layout in Indesign.

Logo Development

Experimentation with the logo for the magazine.  I want something that will appeal to 18-25 years old. I feel the most striking logo is the black textured final furlong logo at the bottom of the page. With my target audience in mind and looking at my reseaarch done into magazines, I can image the FF logos being of appeal to my target audience with a little more development into them.

Font tests

Font tests for magazine headings and text. Interval sans sticks out for headings due to its intrusive blackness to the font. Segoe UI regular is the font that at present I feel will work as the font for the articles.

Brands Aimed at 18-25 Target Audience

All the brands below will be a stylistic guide for the design of my magazine. The design of brands that are aimed at the same target audience as I intend to aim mine at will give me an idea of what appeals to the target audience at present.

Lynx: Although the product is aimed at people of all ages, The marketing side of the brand is very much aimed at the young adult. 

Urban Outfitters: A clothing brand aimed at 16 - 25

Similar layout to many other sites. Even the lynx one above.

GQ: Large british magazine that is aimed at 18-25 year olds.
The content is broad in this magazine and it covers politics, fashion, style,  entertainment, sport, comment and reviews.

 

 http://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/magazine 

Mens Fitness: 

Mens fitness- Another magazine that is aimed at the target audience.The magazine is very cluttered on the front. The change in the colours of the front are varied creating impact. The website is very basic and reminds me more of a blog layout than a website.

http://www.mensfitness.com/http://www.mensfitness.com/

 Ecko Unltd:

Urban clothing brand aimed at the same target market that I am trying to communicate with.

The design is basic, quite old fashioned in layout.

 Nike:
Nike website that uses an interesting layout. The target market is quite broad but generally it is around the 18-25 year market. They use a seperated grid layout which uses an image spacing the entire page layout at the top with seperations into 4 grid boxes below.

 Circa:
Skate company that specialices in  apparell. Grid system is very similar to that of Ecko.

 Etnies:
Very visually appealing site. Banner Image with 4 seperate images to navigate.
Basic Grid system but very effective. 

Flatspot:

This is the most visually pleasing design. It is quite a basic design but marrys image and text really well. The site is seperated into sections but remains uniform. The colour scheme is consitent throughout and draws you in.

Experiments with Font

Font Test: Interval Sans Pro

Horse Racing Publications

The problem with most horse racing magazines at the moment, is the fact the target audience is of the older generation. This is very much evident in the design and layout of the magazine covers and the features that lie within them. There is no consideration of the font or the composition, other than a generic tabloid layout which doesn't really stand out.
This is why I am intending on creating a horse racing magazine with more emphasis on younger audiences. The focus on layout, composition, and type within the magazine can make a great amount of difference to the appeal to the audience. It would still probably appeal to the older audiences that already read them, but just make them a little more exciting than the format they currently stand in.

 Racing ahead is a monthly racing magazine.
It uses the same grid layout every month for the cover and insides alike. The fonts on the cover are overused throughout the magazine, and look dated.

An inner page feature from racing ahead.
Standardised tabloid layout. Nothing which really involves you within the magazine. Text flowed throughout columns. Layout is still in the past.
The images throughout are generally constrained to the same placement throughout. The images are also confined to square or rectangular frames.

The Racing Post is one of the more popular racing publications. It follows the frameworks of a newspaper for horse racing. The design of the racing post is better than Racing ahead, but still does not market the sport as it should be portrayed.
The fact that it is in newspaper format could be half the trouble. It faces similar layouts throughout due to the constrictions of the format.